3 FROM HELL (2019)

 

Written & Directed By: Rob Zombie Cinematography: David Daniel Editor: Glenn Garland

Cast: Sherri Moon Zombie, Bill Moseley, Sid Haig, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Richard Brake, Emilio Rivera, Dee Wallace, Dot Marie Jones, Lucinda Jenney, Richard Edson, Clint Howard, Sean Whalen, Sylvia Jeffries, Kevin Jackson, Pancho Moler, Daniel Roebuck, Wade Williams, Richard Riehle, Tracey A. Leigh, Steven Michael Quezada, Danny Trejo, 

After barely surviving prison, the demented Firefly clan goes on the run, unleashing a whole new wave of murder, madness, and mayhem.

It’s understandable that this is a franchise that is popular. So while after THE DEVIL’S REJECTS one would suspect there would be no sequel. Here we find out the characters somehow survived the last film. Proving the success of that movie but also leaving this film with some pretty big shoes to fill.

Now the characters are serving life and lose another popular character. The film telegraphs itself with a reference to the movie DESPERATE HOURS to clue you in where it is going. So the first half plays on a variation of that. One escaped prisoner and an accomplice hold the warden's wife and another couple hostage for the warden to breakout another prisoner. 

There are more requisite killings and implied rape rather than showing, but halfway into the movie realized this plays as more of the same. Which one would expect but the first two films at least tried to distinguish themselves and seemed to have reasoned. This film just seems to be ugly and showcasing brutality for the hell of it. The film realizes this a bit towards the middle then becomes a road picture that ends up featuring a stand-off in Mexico. Not before the film decides to show off these killers skills and let the guys have fantasy sex with willing females.

Some could argue it goes for realism. As the film stays grimy from head to toe, but also makes the Characters even the victims. Evil in their own way with intention. One can understand them not being innocent but in one scene does the warden have to do drugs and be revealed to be having an affair before eventually meeting his doom? Is it to show that the so-called straight-laced moral majority are just as dirty as those they preach against only they do their acts behind closed doors? Ok but as you are playing to an audience that already believes that. The sting just isn’t as sharp. 

The film for the few times it shows style still seems stuck on just trying to justify and dress up the requisite kills. While staying low brown it offering cameos to recognizable character actors.

It also seems like as each film seems to have a style of the past this more touches on the 1980s

As the film keeps all the ugliness that writer/director Rob Zombie seems to revel in and he can be a good filmmaker. When he seems to have more of a  passion for his material. What he is working on as at least with most of his movies he here is at least one memorable trait that makes them memorable. Here it seems more inspired than his last film 31 but still a placeholder more than anything. As we are left to bask in the carnage. Noticeably lower budgeted than the previous films 

The Motley Crue of horror movies what once might have been shocking and seen as breaking the rules cinematic outlaws now just seems familiar and a little out of touch but you still give a chance to as hoping to rekindle a flame or at least take a look back at the memorable times 

They all seem to have new chest tattoos 

Just feels like a NATURAL BORN KILLERS riff of serial killers on the run but not going too far and being written in a film Sam Peckinpah might have made as it turns into a western with a last standoff again 

Turns the ruthless savages into the heroes we are made to root for 

Grade: C-