**
Two young couples are lured to the rural mansion home of a psychotic family of torture killers. The attraction here isn't the gory story (with its many nods to other horror films), but that this is the first film written and directed by musician Rob Zombie, who comes off like a kid in a magic shop, as he fills the screen with one cinematic trick after another: odd angles, video, filters, and so on. The story just holds it down, and in fact one gets the sense Zombie simply filmed a series of thinly connected scenes along with some atmospheric filler and the real work was completed by his team of editors. Still, for all its self-conscious extravagance, it is, occasionally, stylish and imaginative. Just not scary or emotionally involving.
Two young couples are lured to the rural mansion home of a psychotic family of torture killers. The attraction here isn't the gory story (with its many nods to other horror films), but that this is the first film written and directed by musician Rob Zombie, who comes off like a kid in a magic shop, as he fills the screen with one cinematic trick after another: odd angles, video, filters, and so on. The story just holds it down, and in fact one gets the sense Zombie simply filmed a series of thinly connected scenes along with some atmospheric filler and the real work was completed by his team of editors. Still, for all its self-conscious extravagance, it is, occasionally, stylish and imaginative. Just not scary or emotionally involving.
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