Movies
[Review] ‘The Lords of Salem’ A Slow Burn Letdown With Striking Imagery
The most impressive thing about Rob Zombie is that he’s always been able to operate outside of the studio mentality on a low budget. No matter what the film, he makes what he wants to make (sans the Halloween remake). After using Halloween 2 as a way out of his Dimension deal, he’s stripped it down to the bare minimum with his 1970’s inspired The Lords of Salem (his incredibly low budget indie horror that premiered to a sold out crowd at TIFF’s Midnight Madness). Budget appeared to be little bother but, once again, Zombie pens his own screenplay. And that’s littered with problems. The Lords of Salem is definitely cool to watch, and actually pretty entertaining (at times), but let’s be honest here (Rob Zombie fans sat there with a look of shock and disappointment on their faces, displaying the most fake smile you’ve ever seen), it’s not good.
I know Zombie loves his wife and enjoys putting her on screen, but Sheri Moon Zombie cannot carry a film. Again, this shows that Zombie just does whatever he wants, which is totally cool and all, but it does hurt his product. The Lords of Salem could have just been called the Sheri Moon Zombie show. Nearly every shot is of her walking, her in bed, her playing with her dog, and her kind of-sort of naked. The problem is that it doesn’t really propel the story anywhere and makes the film progress at a snail’s pace. But the biggest issue is that, with all of the striking imagery, Rob doesn’t have Sheri react to any of it; nearly everything that happens is either a vision or off in the corner. Yes, a lot of it is extremely cool, but then some of it is shockingly bizarre (like the tiny Devil-God who looked like a cross between Station from Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey and God in “South Park”).
Some of the best stuff is the flashbacks of the Salem 6 performing rituals and getting burned at the stake. The constant expectation was that these witches would be resurrected and create chaos among the women of Salem, and that would have been dope. Instead, the audience gets slapped in the back of the head (with what feels like a log) with an overly artistic, bizarre and unfulfilling performance by the “Lords of Salem.” This must have been due to one of the following: budgetary constraints, Zombie has surround himself with “yes” men, or he just didn’t give a fuck. I suspect it’s the latter, and for Lords, he didn’t even care about his viewers (I think by now he understands that his fans will like anything he does…they are the supreme “yes” men.)
It would be easy to give Lords a pass. It has genuinely creepy imagery, cool scares, super crazy sound design, and even more mind blowing set designs. But there will be no pass, mainly because of the awkwardly unfulfilling ending and the fact that much of the “cool” doesn’t interact with the characters or plot. Rob Zombie sympathizers are going to eat this up, and will spend their night analyzing the finale as if it were some revelation of brilliance. It’s not. It’s just bad. The Lords of Salem could only be recommended as background visuals while you’re jamming to old school White Zombie.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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