Some folks will tell you that the Devil’s Rejects picks up right where House of 1000 Corpses left off, but those people are liars. From the opening sequence it is clear that Rob Zombie has something entirely different in mind for his second film. Whereas House of 1000 Corpses was a loving homage to the grindhouse horrors of the 1970s, the Devil’s Rejects is very much in the spirit of the outlaw Western genre. The grit is so thick on screen that it makes you parched just to look at it. The film begins with the Firefly clan being chased out of their house by Sheriff Wydell, who has come to avenge the death of his brother. Most of the family make a break for it, heading for safety and making carnage out of anything that stands in their way. Along the way the media dubs them “the Devil’s Rejects” and the hunters become the hunted. The righteous anger of the vengeful Sheriff gives way to a kind of sadism identical to the murders perpetrated by the Rejects; as Wydell slips into believing the myth of frontier justice we see just how seductive the path of violence can be. The film culminates in an apocalyptic roadside confrontation: when the dust settles, who will survive and what will be left of them?

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