31 review: Rob Zombie lets loose a fresh batch of killer clowns

Has Rob Zombie caught the zeitgeist or has he engineered it to his own ends? When the scary-clown craze kicked off a few months ago in the United States, it was half-seriously suggested that Rob’s people were responsible. The latest film from the mildly gifted horror director is coming down with scary clowns. But it doesn’t seem likely he’d have the budget to send monstrous proxies throughout the nation. That’s Donald Trump’s job.

We must grant Zombie one thing. He does have a recognisable aesthetic. In films such as The Devil's Rejects, he projected a passion for trash nomads and wasteland grotesques that leads inevitable to the circus imagery we find in 31. There are malign little people in the film. Characters dress in ornate period costumes. Animal masks are worn. If Rob were a smidgeon more gifted, me might allow him to be called the Garbage Chute Fellini.

Think that pretentious? Well, check out Rob. He begins the flick with a quote from Kafka: “A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.” A gang of classic Zombian carnival workers are detained in a large structure ruled by strange people wearing faux 19th-century costumes. The victims are to be the prey in a horrific game. They wander about a maze and try to avoid psychopathic clowns while the pseudo-aristocrats laugh cruelly.

The slim virtues of Rob’s core aesthetic remain firmly in place. Nobody here has the depth of a Henry James protagonist, but the characters are more fully fleshed out than those in most contemporary grindhouse. Malcolm McDowell is on hand to remind us that he’s spent more time slumming it than any of his contemporaries. Some of the killings are very inventive.

What infuriates, however, is the weary conservatism of the piece. Zombie has energy. He has a voice. Would it kill him to use those gifts in the creation of something more original?