Sundance 2016 | ’31’ is a Most Debaucherous Game

Say what you will about Rob Zombie, but at least he’s an auteur. It would be very hard to watch five minutes of any Zombie film and confuse it for the work of another filmmaker, so when you hear that the director of The Devil’s Rejects and The Lords of Salem is doing his own version of The Running Man, whatever you picture in your head is pretty much exactly what you’re going to get.

Sure enough, 31 is a scuzz film of the highest order, with filth caked onto everything in sight and viscera flying every which way amidst strobe lighting and jump cuts. Cackling maniacs who love their jobs (they are gainfully employed as cackling maniacs) dress as the most repulsive clowns imaginable to slaughter carnies for the amusement of a bourgeoisie who, completely free from irony (maybe they’re just trying to take it back), clad themselves in the pompadour and freckle-bespecked regalia of the French aristocracy, in the days before the revolution came, oblivious to their moral flaws.

31 is also, in true Rob Zombie fashion, a love letter to his wife Sheri Moon Zombie, who stars as one of the traveling entertainers who get kidnapped, shoved into an abandoned factory and forced to fight off homicidal clowns as a part of an annual Halloween “game.” As it has ever since his debut feature, House of 1,000 Corpses, Rob Zombie’s camera luxuriates over Sheri Moon and as well it should: the actress is not only beautiful but a veritable fount of energy, and an increasingly accomplished performer. 31 may not provide her the richness of character that The Lords of Salem or even Halloween did, but it does try to elevate her to Linda Hamilton or Sigourney Weaver levels of badass, and in the film’s particular, lurid way… it does succeed.

Photo Courtesy of Sundance Institute

Also: Exclusive | The ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ Spin-Off Has a New Title

While some audience members may take issue with 31’s graphic gore and (mostly articulated, rarely seen) sexual violence, Zombie’s film seems to only exist to shock, and probably for its own sake. The social commentary of similar tales like The Most Dangerous Game and Battle Royale is replaced here by pure, debaucherous showmanship. The film’s final boss, a grim goon named Doom-Head (Richard Brake, rakish and frightening), likes to pontificate about great warriors and the survival of cockroaches but his speeches matter little in an environment where the innocent – or at least the undeserving – are served up for the slaughter by the rich, who themselves are obviously big fans of Zombie’s work.

That’s the irony to 31, and it doesn’t feel intentional. Zombie’s film embraces a late night, road show aesthetic that is designed to appeal to the masses, but our audience surrogates within the actual film are effete, wealthy, amorphous millionaires with no real character to speak of, and no motive beyond mere sadism. They aren’t supposed to have our sympathy, and yet we are expected to derive the same joy from watching these supposed “heroes” fight for their lives, and we seem to be encouraged to revel in Zombie’s brutal theatricality when many of them eventually die. (The puppet masters of 31 even repeatedly update their contestants’ odds of survival, the way most horror movie fans do: taking in new information about the characters and fresh evidence of their resourcefulness, we constantly try to work out which – if any – of the heroes will make it out alive, either by their own force of moxie or the whims of the filmmaker who, doubtless, is trying to both surprise and satisfy us.)

Rob Zombie is too bleak a filmmaker to provide much comeuppance for any of his villains, so the audience of 31 can’t really pretend we ever have the moral high ground. We are simply supposed to indulge in this excessive mania for a little while, to get our twisted jollies while we can, and take some comfort in the fact that the filmmaker’s personable protagonists are adding a human element to an otherwise inhuman situation. 31 may not be particularly clever, since it’s basically just Rob Zombie putting his own stamp on a very familiar concept, and it may not have much to say. But it’s a wild murder spree that engages the senses and frequently, very much on purpose, assaults them. Zombie’s fans will probably be pleased.

Top Photo: Lionsgate Premiere

William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and watch him on the weekly YouTube series Most Craved and What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.

 

The Top 50 Must-See Sundance Movies:

TRENDING

X