• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • HOME
  • NEWS+OPINIONS
    • NEWS TO US
    • COLUMNS
      • APPARENT HORIZON
      • DEAR READER
      • Close
    • LONGFORM FEATURES
    • OPINIONS
    • EDITORIAL
    • Close
  • ARTS+ENTERTAINMENT
    • FILM
    • MUSIC
    • COMEDY
    • PERFORMING ARTS
    • VISUAL ARTS
    • Close
  • DINING+DRINKING
    • EATS
    • SIPS
    • BOSTON BETTER BEER BUREAU
    • Close
  • LIFESTYLE
    • CANNABIS
      • TALKING JOINTS MEMO
      • Close
    • WELLNESS
    • GTFO
    • Close
  • STUFF TO DO
  • TICKETS
  • ABOUT US
    • ABOUT
    • MASTHEAD
    • ADVERTISE
    • PRIVACY POLICY
    • Close
  • BECOME A MEMBER

Dig Bos

The Dig - Boston's Only Newspaper

FILM REVIEW: “3 FROM HELL”

Written by JAKE MULLIGAN Posted October 10, 2019 Filed Under: A+E, Film

Image from 3 FROM HELL, courtesy Lionsgate

Returning to the material which produced The Devil’s Rejects (2005), Rob Zombie resurrects his most cherished characters in 3 From Hell (2019)—and in reanimating them, undoes nearly everything the prior film accomplished. Opening with a strong expository prologue filmed in the manner of late ’80s tabloid-news TV, 3 From Hell instructs us that the villains killed off in that earlier film, Baby Firefly (Sheri Moon Zombie), Otis Driftwood (Bill Moseley), and Captain Spaulding (the late Sid Haig), actually survived their hilariously overdone death scenes and have been locked up ever since (although due to Haig’s ill health at the time of production, his character is quickly swapped out for a new one played by Richard Brake). But the reason Zombie’s script brings them back to life is, rather depressingly, only to perform a simplified retread of the action seen in Rejects: Just like its forebear, 3 From Hell features two central set pieces; one in the middle where the killers physically and psychologically terrorize a group of eventual victims in an enclosed setting, and one at the end where everybody goes all Wild Bunch (1969) while up against a group of antagonistic characters who are on some level connected to a figure played by Danny Trejo (a sequence that in the new film is so broad and contingent upon pre-existing imagery that, even aside from Trejo, it borders on the Robert Rodriguez-esque).

 

The primary differences between Rejects and Hell, in extremely reduced brief, are that this new iteration is cheaper, cornier, more contrived, more cliche (on two different occasions it does the deal where someone points a gun at a primary character and you hear a gunshot only to discover that actually a third person fired it from offscreen, real hack shit), and, most disappointingly of all, far less conflicted about portraying serial killers as antiheroes (in some cases even framing their victims in a they got what was coming to ’em sort of way, and not in a manner all that ironic either). An experience lesser and more usual than its predecessor on nearly every level, 3 From Hell doesn’t even manage to make all that much of the one characteristic which seems inherent to its making, that being the time that’s passed in between entries—while this may be a half-sequel/self-remake in the manner of, say, El Dorado (1966), it has none of that film’s interest in charting what changes about people or personas as they grow older. The Devil’s Rejects, to be clear, seems a great film even still: By transitioning villains into antiheroes at the height of the horror genre’s Bush-era torture-fetish, Zombie created a film which investigated the obsessions and transgressions of cinema and contemporary life alike, not amplifying the pleasures of screen-violence but instead foregrounding those depictions of gruesome amoral grotesquerie to such an extent that any pleasure came accompanied by queasiness. Nothing of the sort can be said of 3 From Hell, merely a simple, indulgent, self-congratulatory victory lap around that which came before it.

 

3 FROM HELL. REVIEW BASED ON UNRATED CUT. ONE NIGHT ONLY SCREENINGS VIA FATHOM EVENTS ON 10.14, 7PM @ REGAL FENWAY, AMC SOUTH BAY CENTER, AND REVERE SHOWCASE. AVAILABLE ON HOME VIDEO AND VOD OUTLETS ON 10.15.

JAKE MULLIGAN
Related posts
  • JAKE MULLIGAN
    https://digboston.com/author/jake-mulligan/
    FILM REVIEW: "JACKASS FOREVER"
  • JAKE MULLIGAN
    https://digboston.com/author/jake-mulligan/
    FILM REVIEW: 9TO5, THE STORY OF A MOVEMENT
  • JAKE MULLIGAN
    https://digboston.com/author/jake-mulligan/
    MOVIE DIARY: "BETTER LUCK TOMORROW"
  • JAKE MULLIGAN
    https://digboston.com/author/jake-mulligan/
    FILM REVIEW: "NO SUDDEN MOVE"

Filed Under: A+E, Film Tagged With: 3 From Hell, Rob Zombie

WHAT’S NEW

We Turned the North End Restaurant Lawsuit Against Mayor Wu Into a Musical

We Turned the North End Restaurant Lawsuit Against Mayor Wu Into a Musical

Photo by Mike Connolly

Opinion: Defending the Right to Abortion

Longtime Anti-Nuclear Activist On Trial This Morning In Plymouth

Longtime Anti-Nuclear Activist On Trial This Morning In Plymouth

The ACLU's Critical "Do You Know Who Your Sheriff Is?" Campaign

The ACLU’s Critical “Do You Know Who Your Sheriff Is?” Campaign

Sacred Spaces: Special Mosque Edition

Sacred Spaces: Special Mosque Edition

“Stop Abortion Bans Now” by Fibonacci Blue. CC-BY 2.0. Original photo cropped for the Somerville Wire by Jason Pramas.

OPINION: R.I.P. ROE?

Primary Sidebar

FEATURED EVENT

Most Popular

  • We Turned the North End Restaurant Lawsuit Against Mayor Wu Into a Musical
  • Do You Want To Work For the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission?
  • DigBoston box among the boxes of defunct newspapers in Union Square, Somerville, Mass. Photo by Jason Pramas. Copyright 2022 Jason Pramas. EDITORIAL: DIGBOSTON SUSPENDING PRINT EDITION, GOING DIGITAL-ONLY (AGAIN)
  • Inbox: Red Bull Cliff Diving Returns To Boston Waterfront
  • How Long Can Major Cannabis Cultivators Sustain Massive Indoor Grows In Mass?

CURRENT STREET EDITION

DIG 24.08 – 04/21/22

Footer

Social Buttons

DigBoston facebook DigBoston Twitter DigBoston Instagram

Masthead

About

Advertise

Privacy Policy

Customer Service

Distribution

About Us

DigBoston is a one-stop nexus for everything worth doing or knowing in the Boston area. It's an alt-weekly, it's a website, it's an e-mail blast, it's a twitter account, it's that cool party that you were at last night ... hey, you're reading it, so it's gotta be good. For advertising inquiries: [email protected] To reach Editorial: [email protected] For internship opportunities: [email protected]