Rob Zombie is Making a Sequel to ‘The Devil’s Rejects’ (Despite What Happened at the End of ‘The Devil’s Rejects’)

The news that a horror movie is getting a sequel is not surprising – just about every horror movie gets a sequel and even the most undeserving get entire franchises built around them. But Rob Zombie‘s The Devil’s Rejects brought the saga of the Firefly clan to a definitive close. When the credits rolled, there was no room for a sequel. Period. At all. Nada.

But here we are, 12 years later, learning that Zombie is planning a sequel to his gruesome 2005 film, which was a ready a sequel to 2003’s House of 1000 Corpses. At the very least, it sounds like we’re getting a trilogy of these movies.

Bloody Disgusting reports that Rob Zombie is directing a sequel to The Devil’s Rejects, but the details begin and end there. They speculate that it could be a spin-off focusing on related characters or a prequel, both of which seem reasonable considering what happened to the cast at the end of the previous movie. They’re also not sure when he plans to get production underway, but considering how his last few films have been received, “as soon as humanly possible” feels like the right course of action.

Okay, let’s stop dancing around it. Spoilers from this point onward.

At the end of The Devil’s Rejects, Zombie sent his trio of redneck, serial killing lunatics driving into a hail of bullets while “Free Bird” blasted on the soundtrack. It’s a totally bonkers scene: shot almost entirely in agonizing slow motion and edited to a song that is way too long for the sequence of events of being depicted, all while working overtime to elicit sympathy for characters who more-than-deserve the violent deaths coming to them. But it also sums up my fascination with The Devil’s Rejects – for better or worse, it’s the kind of scene that only Rob Zombie could have directed.

The Devil’s Rejects is grotesque and morally filthy and about too many things at once, but it is also Zombie’s best movie. It’s better made than the scrappy House of 1000 Corpses, more coherent than Lords of Salem, not misunderstanding one of the greatest horror movies of all time like the Halloween remake and its sequel, and not entirely unwatchable like 31. It has everything you’d expect from a Zombie production (’70s aesthetic, gross beards, rednecks who swear and murder), but it does all of that in a way that is actually totally watchable…provided you’re on board for its particular brand of gruesome, nihilistic mayhem.

So yeah, I’m not surprised that Zombie is retreating to familiar turf after his last few movies have left audiences baffled or angry or both. But with the core cast deader than dead (see the YouTube video above) and the actors 12 years older (making a prequel feel unfeasible), I wonder what direction he’ll go in. Maybe this will be The Devil’s Rejects: The Next Generation, giving Zombie a chance to leave the ’70s behind and try on some ’80s nostalgia for a change.

In any case, I know I’ll see it: Zombie’s movies are too singular to ignore, even when they’re awful.

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