Horror movies, perhaps more than any other genre are capable of being grand in their failure, or being failures in their grandiosity, flat-out good, and flat-out bad. In part, genre movies have always had an uphill battle because they simply don’t get the funding. Your proposition of a reboot of a sitcom is a lot less of a risk than a Satanist cult horror drama and, consequently, the budgets show the difference.

• Plan 9 from Outer Space is flat out bad.
• Basket Case is good but shows its seams for lack of budget
• The Blair Witch Project is good-ish and beautifully hides its lack of budget
• The Conjuring universe is meh, but the studio uses marketing and high-budget stars to own the segment

In search of a spook-tacular movie over the Halloween weekend, we notice that Rob Zombie’s film “Lord of Salem” was available for free on Amazon Prime video, so we gave it a try. I had seen Zombie’s first film (“House of 1,000 Corpses”) some time in the aughts back in San Jose with my horror aficionado friend, Mice. At that time, it dead met my expectations: low-budget, schlocky, bloody, “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” style horror. But in “Lords of Salem,” both Lauren and I were surprised by its relatively high (for the genre) quality. While it’s still not good, it’s a hint that with his formidable mental index of the horror genre, Zombie may well have a great horror movie in him.

What shifted LoS from schlock-horror to step-toward-greatness horror, in my opinion is:

• Literate themes focus
• An adept eye for visual composition
• Awareness and healthy respect for the drama-horror films like “The Omen,” “Rosemary’s Baby,” and “The Exorcist”

I didn’t know anything about this movie before coming in. The most I knew were the chief actors, a red and blue palette, and the ad on top of cabs in the city. I thought it was maybe about a modern girl who uncovered the truth about a murder of a sixties-era girl South of Houston Street and #fuckyeahfeminism would right a wrong.¹

Not quite. But, like a good Halloween suspense movie, by the time I realized what I was doing, it was too late, and I had wrestle with my dawning understanding of the film amid the chaotic events of the film’s climax.