REVIEW: The Lords of Salem (Rob Zombie, 2013)

Heidi sleeps beneath an enormous painted moon, the infamous man-in-the-moon from George Melies' silent classic "A Trip to the Moon."  Hanging above her bed like a dreamcatcher, pierced by a rocket, the moon classically symbolizes women's fertility, their monthly cycle, and one of the fundamental ideas of witchcraft was that post-menopausal women made salacious deals with the Devil.  If they were the moon, he was the rocket.  He excited sensations thought to be dormant, and he stoked the women's jealousy and hatred of the fertile by encouraging the sacrifice of the newborn.  The fact that none of this was ever witnessed outside of shaky testimony has failed to diminish the potency of centuries-old iconography.  Like the vampire, the werewolf, and the onryo, the witch is now canon, a classic terror in the collective nightmare.

Like the vampire, the werewolf, and the onryo, the witch can too quickly become cliche and hackneyed.  A statue in the center of Salem depicts a cheerful woman on a broomstick, a cartoon crescent moon suspended behind her.  Is this what it's come to?  Is this the trite legacy of a town once drenched in truly horrific paranoia, torn apart by intimations of the literal demoniac?  Writer/director Rob Zombie has no patience for such timid images.  He opens The Lords of Salem with an unnerving depiction of a witches' sabbath, as such an event might have existed in the darkest, wettest pit of Puritan imagination.  The blasphemous women grin through smiles of black teeth.  They disrobe, cloaks falling to the earth in the black of night.  Wearing only the flaccid skin of old age, they scream and chant, holding hands, dancing in a circle around firelight.

Their descendants litter the town of Salem, and one of the legacies of Salem's past is Sheri Moon Zombie's Heidi Hawthorne.  A heavy metal shock-jock with a love for silent cinema (a genre much of the film could occupy), she lives in an apartment likely re-built on the foundation of a ruined Victorian mansion, no doubt topped with gables.  Now it is a building where bricks meet firmly and doors are sensibly shut.  Except for the black door at the end of the second floor hallway, a monolith that sits in the center of the movie screen, daring viewers to consider its secrets.  The door creaks open, and the room's sole ornament is a fluorescent cross, or maybe not.  A specter - one of the witches burned at the stake? - wanders silently.  Deeper still, something hulking and lupine lurks just out of view, and late in the film, a swarm of rats skitters out of the room, into the rest of the witch-house.

One of the film's witches, disguising her power as quaint palm reading, makes a distinction early on between destiny, in which free choice can still play a role, and fate, when forces local and cosmic mock our decisions.  This doesn't quite excuse a feeling of passivity that arrives too soon, as Heidi falls into trance-like behavior after playing a hypnotic record that's hardly metal but enrapturing nonetheless.  Lethargic, sleepy-eyed, she wanders from one disturbing image to another, through dreams and reality.  The problem lies not with Sheri Moon Zombie, but with Heidi herself, who lacks the fighting spirit of Rosemary Woodhouse.  In her own way, Rosemary was as bound to fate as Heidi, but that never stopped her from trying to halt the wheel of fortune.  In a film as methodical and influenced as The Lords of Salem, yes, the ultimate destination may be a foregone conclusion, but must Heidi accept it so readily?

Occasionally, she sacrifices the spotlight to a likable, paternal figure named Francis Matthias (Bruce Davison), who offers smiles and bemused guffaws when confronted with the possibility of genuine witchcraft.  His attitude adds immeasurably to what is at heart a role built on function instead of character.  As a scholar on Salem's past, he provides vital plot information, and although he surrounds himself with shelves full of old, dusty tomes, Francis (a possible reference to Francis Dane, Salem clergyman and skeptic) makes his most significant discovery on a convenient family tree website.  The information he learns grants the film some semblance of logic, which Zombie metes out just enough to allow for a theatrical release.  This all makes sense, the film declares, and cackling can be heard behind the insistence.

How does a sleazy priest in a small chapel fit in?  What of the enormous, gold-covered church with the loathsome, slimy specter at the top of the stairs?  Zombie suggests instead of informing, his style confident enough that the baroque visuals feel as though they must be meaningful.  Otherwise, why the attention?  Why the devotion?  The entire film becomes sacramental, ritualistic.  Rhythmic.  Perhaps too rhythmic in the climactic final moments, which substitute the slow-burn confidence for manic, music-video editing and digital effects.  These images frustrate, evoking memories of MTV better left buried, but the climax is hardly the point.  It's an obligatory requirement.  The real story is the sequence of images.  The message is the mood.  Best to embrace the tableau.  The fevered imagination of The Lords of Salem steamrolls hero and viewer alike with controlled cruelty and nightmarish implacability.

RATING: B