14 years after ‘The Devils Rejects’ graced theatre screens Rob Zombie returned in what was being promised as the ‘Final chapter’ in the newly minted ‘Firefly Trilogy’ and never has the phrase ‘Shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted’ been a more apt and fitting description for a piece of cinema.

I dont even really know where to begin on the woes that plagued this film from start to finish, but there were so many incidents, the blurays extra features consist of the movie (standing at damn near 2 hours) and a FOUR PART ‘making of’ series that explains EXACTLY how much this film really didnt want to be willed into existence.

Kicking things off, Sid Hague, a third of ‘The Devils Rejects’ and by FAR the most charismatic ‘heart and soul’ offering of the three, was INCREDIBLY ill, to the point that he could only appear in limited closed set footage, he passed away less than a week after the film came out. meaning the entire script had to be re-edited to hastily make use of what footage they had of him, because the studio made it VERY clear that if Spaulding wasnt in the movie, there was no movie… (essentially they shot a couple of days with him looking VERY frail in a jail cell, and used carefully framed shots of body doubles to fill in the blanks). While redistributing some of his lines to Baby and Otis and then just…making up a completely new long lost relative who takes up the remaining 3/4 of what would have been Sids lines…

At that point, production may as well have halted honestly. Captain Spaulding WAS these movies, and without him, its just not the same. On that note, production problems were aplenty, with production stopping and starting across most of 2018. And post production was equally a nightmare, with Zombie essentially deciding to just…pause doing anything on the movie for 5 months to go tour and support Maralyn Manson. Its a movie the feels like it was forced into the world against any good reason for it to ACTUALLY exist. and it shows.

The film opens with the ending footage from ‘The Devils Rejects’ and a hasty news report fills in the blanks, essentially the ‘Rejects’ were gunned down in their convertable (well…duh?) But all 3 somehow survived and spent a year in intensive care recovering from their injuries. Once they were well enough, Spaulding, Otis and Baby were put on trial for mass, mass, mass, MASS murder. And one by one the 3 were sentenced to life imprisonment. with the death penalty hung over them as some kind of brucie bonus.

As the trial goes on, its revealed that theres a big public following for the ‘3 from hell’ with popular opinion being that ‘THE MAN’ is trying to put down 3 innocent people who’s only crime was ‘STICKING IT TO THEM!’…Shortly after this, to set an example, Spaulding is sentenced to death and is murdered (Not a spoiler, this happens in the first 10 minutes of this 2 hour movie…) Otis and Baby narrowly avoid the death penalty, but both get life, and then the film flashes forwards about 10 years.

Its now 1988/1989, and Otis has had his security lowered and he’s now able to go and work on a chain gang. First day on the job, he’s…somewhat miraculously paired up with Danny Trejo (half of the ‘Unholy two’ from the last film) who has NO memory of meeting Otis, but Otis remembers him. Anyway; long story short, Otis murders the entire chain gang, Trejo included, with the help of his long lost half brother ‘Winslow’ and the pair go into hiding, with the plan to bust ‘Baby’ out of jail.

Baby meanwhile, is in jail…and, has gone totally insane. Not psychopathically insane. Im talking full blown straight jacker, jabbering incoherently, hallucinating, Ripper Roo from ‘Crash Bandicoot 2’ levels of insane. Shes been repeatedly denied parole because, in the 10 years shes been behind bars, she’s committed 158 prison offences and beat up half a dozen guards. The wardens make her life hell, but she gives as good as she gets.

and it’s here really that the film starts proper…and, disspointingly, its basically a rerun of the plot of ‘The Devils Rejects’ just with some slight plot changes. So, the rest of the first hour of the movie is Otis and Wimslow doing a ‘Home invasion’ (again) to try and intimidate and terrify the lead warden of the jail holding baby to let her go (I dont think its spoilers to tell you, they succeed) And then the second hour(ish) of the film is the reformed rejects fleeing to mexico to try and lie low. with the only new element being that One of the sons of the ‘Unholy two’ gets wind that the rejects have crossed the border, and out of vengence for his dad, he gets a team of assassins together to try and put the rejects, in the ground, once and for all.

And every single facet of this film SCREAMS “Ten years too late”. Not ONE element of this production feels like it worked in 2019, and its even worse rewatching it in 2025.

The script is a hodge podge. It feels like Zombie started with ‘The Devils Reject’ script and just took it down to its base elements and then re-wrote the dialogue. because thats basically all this is, a rerun of ‘rejects’ but longer, less fun, with older characters who dont feel quite right, and a third of the heart missing. at an hour and 55 minutes, this is painful to sit through. it isnt even really ‘slow burn’ its padding. padding in an attempt to try once again to make an ‘epic’ out of the 70s exploitation genre. It worked once, you cant re-run it and expect it to work again.

I’ve mentioned it earlier, but there is a HUGE Spaulding shaped hole in this production, and the film just cannot get past that barrier. its a difficult challenge, I think any script that had this difficulty thrown at it would have struggled. But its particularly noticable here.

The script feels like two shorter (45 minute) films stitched together with 20 minutes of loose filler stapling the two plots together. The opening home invasion segment is literally just a rerun of the motel invasion in rejects. but less interesting much slower paced, with less characters, the dialogue isnt nearly as scathing, witty or biting as ‘rejects’ it feels like Rob Zombie is ‘Tribute banding’ his own bloody films at this point. ‘D’ya remember this hit?!’ Yes Rob. Yes I do.

The second half is a little bit more fresh, trading a brothel for a Mexican ghetto. But the one thing I hated about ‘Corpses’ starts creeping back into the film around this point, and thats ‘Rob Zombie: Big brain horror fan™’ As the characters start name dropping old horror movies, clips from ‘Bela Lugosi meets a brooklyn gorilla’ and ‘The Hunchback of notre Dame’ are shown throughout the film. shots are lifted from multiple horror films of the 60s and 70s. entire plotlines and themes are stolen from some of the Corman/Poe films at one point. Its frustrating and unpleasent and reeks of a film maker who had an hours worth of original ideas and nowhere to go from there.

The pacing of this film is terrible, as mentioned it feels like an ‘Act 1’/’Act 2’ situation, and honestly? compartmentalising them into clean cut acts (with act cards) may have actually worked more in this films favour, because trying to seamlessly transition our characters from the scenario they’re in in the first hour, with the scenario they find themselves in in the 2nd, is jarring and clunky. it feels like the film has 6 acts rather than 3 (act 1: part 1, 2 and 3/act 2: part 1,2 and 3) which again, just makes the film feel like it drags on for a month and year. The Devils rejects could have been 15 minutes shorter and been basically perfect. this film could lose an hour and it’d make NO difference to the core story…and thats BAD…REALLY BAD.

The tones a bit all over the place too, if ‘House’ was a 60/40 horror comedy, ‘Devils’ was a straight horror with thriller/action elements and a sprinkling of humour throughout, this is just an A>B clean cut bloody horror/action film…and thats about it. guns and goring…thats all there is…just guns, goring and in the 3rd act some nudity. and it feels WEIRD that its that way, because the dark humour and the thriller elements have been so embedded into this series from the start, it’d be a bit like if they made a Childs play film and Chucky didnt get a single gag in the whole thing. ITS WEIRD.

Not helped either by the concious decision to write the characters a strikingly different to how they were in previous entries. Im not going to comment on Sid Hagues development of Spaulding because…the guy was LITERALLY dying and has 2 minutes of screentime…But Otis has gone from weird ‘charles manson’ esq philosophical sexual cult killer in ‘House’, to a dryer, but still somewhat philosophical and rapey murderer in ‘Rejects’ to…basically just a quippy guy who starts conversations with people to just brickwall them and then stab them…thats no fun.

Baby by contrast went from a sociopathic psycho killer femme fatale who used her body and bambi eyes to lure people into a false sense of safety, then kills them horrendously, to a more muted, but still fairly femme fatale psycho in ‘Rejects’ to just…a dirty…dirty hippie psycho who spends most of the runtime just rambling incoherently and murdering anyone who walks near her.

The degredation of these characters means, I dont really feel like im watching the same people anymore. Some people could argue there was a weird shift in genre,tone and character profile between ‘House’ and ‘Rejects’. But the jump in tone and character profile between ‘Rejects’ and ‘3 from’ is an absolute gulf! its unbelievable. and a major MAJOR downgrade truthfully.

In amongst all of this you also have the addition of Richard Brake as long lost family member Wimslow. I mean no disrespect because Brake plays it about as well as its given. But this character is a placeholder. he has no distinctive charm or style, no unique personality traits. It feels like he’s literally only here because Hague isnt. and you cant call the film ‘3 from hell’ if theres only 2 of them. So he’s filling in the ‘Mike the cool person’ of this movie.

I guess what im trying to say is a good hour of the opening of this film is dry and repetative, the 2nd half does *try* to do something a *bit* new. it has a few peppered moments that were fun, but it absolutely wasnt worth the hour and 40 minutes to get to that point, and the ending, rather than feeling like a finale to a trilogy 18 years in the making, instead feels like a film maker abandoning his script midway through a sentence. its very dissapointing.

On the direction front, im going to keep it short, but bittersweet. This feels like Rob rewatched ‘The Devils Rejects’ and then, while not giving this film his full attention, he just tried to redo what he did there here. And the result is a film that at times feels lower quality visually than an ‘Asylum’ studios attempt at making ‘The Devils Rejects’ shots are lazy, halfway through the film they suddenly decide they want to try and reintroduce neon and vivid colour usage (last seen in ‘House’) which comes out of nowhere and feels VERY shoehorned in after everything that comes before it. the style doesnt quite feel as coherent and consistent as ‘Rejects’ had for a vision. It honestly feels like the director lost his way midway through production, and just…couldnt get his thread back.

Direction of the cast too isnt the greatest, 50% of this movie is just people sat around lethargically ‘shooting the shit’ you could have told me those scenes were just the actors trying to decide what they were going to do for ther weekend, and i’d believe you. 25% of this is…not even hammy, just badly acted aggressive mutilation and threatening scenes. and 25% is semi decent, but not particularly remarkable fight scenes. and again, I cannot stress this enough. IN UNIVERSE, these characters have been in solitary for 10 years. they should be frail and out of shape for the most part. I have NO idea how Otis is able to go toe to toe with so many people, sometimes 30 years his junior and display incredible knife skills…when the guy was literally a backwater hillbilly who kidnapped and screwed cheerleaders for most of the first film…suddenly his fecking RAMBO…Everyone delivers their lines a bit dryly, people seem to go where they want with limited on screen instruction…its messy and not very clean creatively.

The cine isnt great either, they’ve toned back the seizure inducing editing from ‘Rejects’ (for the most part) which im grateful for…But in its place instead are long LONG minimally edited scenes of just backing and forthing dialogue that reads like an Amdrams 3rd year final theater piece featuring ‘old folks trying to find their place in the world’. Composition is overly basic, with only the fight scenes really getting any kind of upgrade on the visuals front, but even thats hamstrung by the return of the violent editing. Its…just…dull. not bad, not great…boring.

Performance wise? honestly? ‘phoned in’ is about as good as it gets. Bill Mosely and Sheri Moon Zombie both feel like they’re along for the ride because ‘its work’ and they get a paid vacation for a few weeks to hang with their friends. their deliveries dont have that manic sincerity they had in previous entires, and they just kind of feel done with the roles…im sure they’d love the opportunity to cameo in another Zombie movie…but im pretty confident this is the last time we’ll see another ‘firefly’ film.

The supporting cast, are probably some of the better aspects of this production. arguably some of the best to come from this trilogy even…with Jeff Daniel Phillips as the Warden getting a good range to work with as his happy homelife is rudely interrupted. Emilio Rivera as the son of the ‘unholy two’ bringing a cold bluntness, and most importantly ENERGY to proceedings which really did help pump up the final act a bit. and Pancho Moler as Sebastian (a handyman working the complex the gang lie low in) getting a REALLY solid turn to explore some emotional ranges not really seen in any of the other movies…Though this is spoiled somewhat if you remember that a similar plotline was explored in ‘Todd Brownings: Freaks’ and then you remember BIG BRAIN ZOMBIE cant keep his silent era feelings in his goddamn pants.

The scores awful. just awful. its another jukebox attempt, but it feels like bargain basement cuts, rather than the prime ones in the previous film. the incidental music is totally unmemorable. it feels thrown together, and non of it really works…It feels..rushed.

Had Zombie jumped on this project in say…2013/2014, with Sid Hague in situe…AND he ACTUALLY focussed on giving us something that felt like a logical extension and development of these characters, rather than some kind of weird repackaging of the old film with different bells and whistles on it. It could have been a fantastic way to close off this story. as it stands it came out about 10 years too late, with a third of the cast missing and it just feels rushed and poorly put together. Like Zombie realised he didnt have that much time left to finish this, but rather than measure twice cut once to actually try and finish this trilogy off with something that sat like a weight in the audiences stomach, he didnt measure at all and just tried to cut once…and, in my opinion, thats what killed it. 3 From Hell is a poor end to the ‘Firefly’ trilogy…I only rewatched it this time because I wasnt on Letterboxd when I last watched it. And it’ll be a long LONG time before I put this one back in my player again. Stick with ‘House’ and ‘Rejects’ they’re a near perfect pairing and ‘Rejects’ ends the story in a way that this film couldnt have begun to match…

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/3-from-hell/1/