Set an indeterminate but apparently short time after House, Rejects opens with the Ruggsville County Police force showing up at the Firefly familt farm, packed to the gills with weapons and looking to share some bullets with the clan. Leading the police is Sheriff John Wydell, brother to Sheriff George Wydell, who was shot and killed by Mother Firefly. A shootout follows, with Rufus Firefly Junior (AKA RJ) dead, Mother arrested, and only Otis Driftwood and Baby managing to escape. The siblings make a run for it, contacting their father, Captain Spaulding, and hiding at the Khaki Palms motel. What follows is best described as a "road trip from Hell, and back again," as the surviving Fireflys spread a swath of death and carnage throughout the countryside, with Wydell stalking their every move, preparing to strike.
Put in simple terms, The Devil's Rejects is nothing like House of 1000 Corpses, and if you enter the theatre expecting House of 2000 Corpses you will inevitably be disappointed. No, The Devil's Rejects instead is its own film; Zombie (who has often said he hates sequels) crafts the film to be a unique and very different expierence from his earlier work. Where House was shrouded in darkness, Rejects is shot in scorching sun; where House adored the oddities and idiosynacracies of the Firefly family, Rejects is concerned with the a more grounded tone of realistic violence. Most glaring, though, is the lack of ay sort of sympathetic or heroic protagonist -- while House was somewhat traditionally laid out with its quartet of unwitting teenaged victims, the main protagonist of Rejects is the obsessive, violent, sadisitc lunatic Wydell, who is every bit as cruel and merciless as the murderers he hunts down.
One element which carries over from the first film is the setting. Rooted firmly in the late 70s, Rejects draws its primary inspiration from the films and music of the era. Besides the obvious works which helped shape the Firefly family (TCM, The Hills Have Eyes, Dawn Of The Dead et al.), Zombie further branches out and touches on themes of retribution, revenge, and vigilantism, notably from Last House On The Left but also from more popular fare like Walking Tall, Death Wish, and Billy Jack, not to mention the darlings of the "ultraviolent" school of film making, including Reservoir Dogs. That the audience is put into the position to feel hatred for the villians of the piece, and then turned around and made to feel the same thing for the supposed hero connects directly with Last House, which used this trick to great and terrible effect in 1972, and Zombie shoots for the same idea now. Its not as effective, but it still works, and forces the audience to examine their own views on the idea of justice and revenge. (As a side note, I do not recommend the trashy, exploitative Last House On The Left as a film, but its influence and impact on the horror genre is worth mentioning.)
Rejects stands more on its own than House does. It tells its own story, expounds on the existing characters to give them more life, and creates new characters who are compelling and layered. This is the film many people expected from House, and may very well satisfy those who did not like the earlier film. By turning the lens more on the routine, we find the horrible acts that much worse; seeing Captain Spaulding in his home life, maing coffee in his kitchen and watching his commercials on TV with glee makes it all the worse when he later confronts a little boy and threatens to kill his whole family; the same kind of emotional resonance occurs when we see Baby playfully teasing Otis with an ice cream cone like any sister might do to any older brother. There is context to the characters that was absent in House which serves to round them out in such a way that the darkness of humanity on display is so profound that we can't help but be mindboggled. Wydell shines as the best character in the film, a good man driven over the edge of madness by his obsession for his brand of Texas "justice" for the Fireflys. He brings a power and manic energy to the screen that none of the "heroic" characters from House could ever approach. And when he finally gets his hands on them, the emotional investment which Zombie has given us for the Fireflys forces us to shift from shock and disgust at their actions to pity and anger at their fate -- not to mention a desire for comeuppance for Wydell, taking the role of the cruel torturer.
Zombie's style is more muted this time around. There are some clever shots, and some amusing bits with the frame, but as a general rule the film is much less flashy than its predecessor. Which goes towards my earlier point about making the film unique and different from House, but also allows for the massive feeling of "ordinary" the setpieces are meant to invoke. Even the one sheet, featuring a severed arm sitting on the floor outside of an open motel room door, plays to this idea of horror in the commonplace. Zombie also manages to gather a collection of talent for this film which makes horror fans stand up and notice, but few others. Besides Haig, Molsley, and Moon returning from the first film, along with Matthew McCory reprising his role as Tiny, we also get (in roles of varying sizes) Tyler Mane, Ken Foree, Michael Berryman, Diamond Dallas Page, Danny Trejo, PJ Soles, Ginger Lynn, and Steve Railsback. Those names might not mean anything, but when you see them, you'll know what's what.
Ultimately, Zombie has created in The Devil's Rejects a sort of catharsis for the nature of film and the horror genre in particular. Its as if he wanted to make an epic film that could be looked back upon in the years to come and pointed at and said "There was a film that put it all on the table." To that end, Zombie succeeds with gusto. Equal parts crime film, survival horror, and vigilante revenge story, Rejects is one for the ages. And though time will tell what its reputation is to become, for 2005, it stands tall as a treat for genre fans to savor and enjoy.
