content warning: nudity, alcohol abuse, sexual assault, violence against women, gore, drug abuse, violence against children, death by suicide (reported)

Rob Zombie’s horror films are about capturing an aesthetic. He is very knowledgeable about horror and knows the exact look he wants for all of his work. It’s not that the story doesn’t matter; it comes second to tone and style. There’s a reason why the Universal Halloween Horror Night events inspired by Rob Zombie’s works are among the most acclaimed haunts and scare zones in the industry. Zombie’s cinematic aesthetic is terrifying and it’s best experienced moment to moment.

The Lords of Salem follows heavy metal radio DJ Heidi as she comes face to face with the history of witchcraft in Salem. That’s it. That’s the plot. There’s more nuance to it, but that’s the point. Rob Zombie wanted to make a film about witches, so he made one.

One of the more fascinating elements of The Lords of Salem is the combination of different horror eras. Heidi lives in a 60s aesthetic, playing off of those expectations of the late 60s/early 70s witch films. It also plays into that more modern haunted house style that was peaking at the time. Think The Wicker Man or Season of the Witch meets Insidious or Paranormal Activity. Of course, those contemporary films can trace their origin to techniques popularized in The Exorcist, but timing is everything in horror and the Sinisters of the world were reigning high in the early 2010s. Either way, it’s an evolution of style for Zombie who typically sticks to exploitation/grindhouse and German Expressionism as his source of inspiration.

What that really means is this Zombie film is not about jump scares and shock value. It’s not exactly quiet. Zombie is a musician at heart and the score of his films is as important as the actors onscreen. Calm and controlled are better terms. You will be scared when Zombie is good and ready for you to be scared. Until then, you’ll be unnerved by tone and imagery.

This is a different spin on the more classic witchcraft narrative in horror films. Heidi gets a combination of the male and female experience in those older stories. For men in the period witch film, the main character is quietly manipulated into doing whatever a coven wants, unable to fight back until it should be too late to save himself. For women, the main character is used and even tormented by her neighbors, forced to choose between bending to their will or destroying the only world she’s ever known.

In The Lords of Salem, Heidi is being pushed to connect with centuries of practice around Boston that want her and her alone to join them. It’s a two-pronged attacked on her sense of self control. Many people in her life extend her gifts and courtesies that create strong bonds she never expected. She’s also terrorized by the appearance of Margaret Morgan, the leader of a coven during the Salem Witch Trials. Both narratives are happening at the same time, hitting all their expected beats, which creates a fascinating push and pull between similar but ultimately opposing horror forms.

What is the fascination with witchcraft in culture and art? Historically, these witches were viewed as a source of evil that needed to be destroyed. For some artists and creators, that is enough to create a terrifying tale. The films, novels, and TV shows of the 60’s and 70’s looked to shake up this narrative. These texts, even when women were ultimately vilified, made the true fear clear. A horror story about witchcraft is a story built on a fear of women having power and agency in their own lives. Stories that blur the line between the expected gender roles in this genre tend to feel confused without this context.

I actually think The Lords of Salem is Zombie’s best horror film. There’s a sense of control here not seen in his prior films. His earlier films have a much more chaotic energy. That isn’t a bad thing at all. There is a place in horror for films like House of a 1000 Corpses. There’s also a place for artful, meditative reimaginings of classic horror forms like The Lords of Salem.

The Lords of Salem is streaming on Amazon Prime.