Essentially, the game consists of a group of innocent people being hunted down by a group of maniacs for 12 hours. This aristocratic group of elderly people, who I'm sure are wealthy, kidnap these people every year on Halloween night and take them to this large building, where they will play the game, the titular 31.
It's obviously inspired by the Purge, with a few little twists. And guess who's the only person to survive the entire ordeal? Yea.
In this movie, though, where almost everyone of the good guys is a terrible actor, she stands out more than everyone. You could sort of hide her in the Devil's Rejects because Sid Haig and Bill Moseley are both great character actors, so Sheri's awfulness didn't stand out so much. So, yea, his insistence on casting his wife in everything he does has certainly kept him from higher profile gigs and she is really a detriment to the quality of the films. She also found her way onto the remake's sequel, by way of flashbacks, flashbacks that I'm sure were written to get her in the film. She even found her way into the Halloween remake, even if she committed suicide early on. I'm sure Sheri Moon Zombie is a lovely human being, not saying anything negative about her on a personal level, but she is a horrifyingly bad actress. She also appeared in one of the fake trailers that appeared in 2007's Grindhouse that was directed, you guessed it, by her husband as well.
Sheri, as an actress, has only appeared in ONE movie that wasn't directed by her husband. Personally, to me, part of the reason that I don't think that Zombie has grown as a filmmaker, or even found the same level of success as a filmmaker as he has as a musician, is the fact that he, seemingly, insists on casting his own wife, Sheri Moon Zombie, in an important role in, pretty much, every one of his goddamn movies. There are some people who believe that Zombie hasn't made a good movie yet and I maintain that The Devil's Rejects is the only good one he has. Is it a movie that's as good as The Devil's Rejects? Eh, not even close. It feels very much like a spiritual sequel to The Devil's Rejects, both in terms of look, setting, time, cool 70s rock soundtrack. And that's certainly an attitude I can respect, even from a manchild like Kevin Smith. The fact that anyone else may like them, or they may not for that matter, doesn't play any part on why he makes films. The point is that, perhaps more than ever, Zombie is doing this simply because he enjoys making films. And I never saw The Lords of Salem, though I did hear it was ambitious. His previous two movies, the Halloween remake and its sequels, were an obvious step down in quality. It was stylish in a dirty and grimy sort of way. He had a style that, while obviously influenced by the 70s grindhouse scene, still felt very much his own. That didn't really transpire for House of 1000 Corpses, but you got to see flashes of potential with his follow-up movie, The Devil's Rejects which, to me, is still his best movie. And I'm not even saying that he wasn't like that before, but I'm certain that there was a part of him, when he first was making House of 1000 Corpses that he would show people that he really could be an effective filmmaker. What I mean by that is that, at this point, I don't think that Zombie is doing this for anyone other than himself. Well, really, with the one exception that Zombie didn't have his first film showered with critical praise like Smith was for Clerks. Rob Zombie reminds me more of a horror version of Kevin Smith.