31 is a 2016 horror slasher film directed by Rob Zombies, starring Sheri Moon Zombie, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Meg Foster, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, Richard Brake, and Malcolm McDowell.  The film follows five travelers who are kidnapped by a gang of clowns and forced to play a survival game called ’31’.

Positives:

• Great use of practical effects
• Lots of violence
• Interesting story
• Great antagonists
• Decent performances
• Decent cast

Negatives:

• Poorly written script
• Forgettable characters
• Exceptionally bad dialogue

Plot:  The story follows a group of carnival workers who are kidnapped and forced to fight for their lives against a group of homicidal maniacs.  The ‘contestants’ are given twelve hours to survive as they navigate a maze of rooms. Gotta give it to the film, the introduction was pretty damn dark.  It was hard to say if Doom-Head was talking to the audience or another character for like five minutes but it was effective.  Definitely set up a great tone for the film.  The film is pretty predictable especially when the characters do stupid ass stuff.  There’s nothing really original about the story but it does manage to keep itself entertaining.  The ending was…interesting and left open for speculation but of course we know what happens.  There is a serious lack of character development especially for characters who’re not developed. (2 out of 5)

Characters:  There characters aren’t anything to run home about.  None of them have any interesting qualities outside of cursing up a storm and acting over sexualized.  Couldn’t really care if they lived or died.  Hell, when the killing started I didn’t even know most of their names.  And it doesn’t help that the characters are incredibly stupid.  The killers (Sick-Head, Psycho-Head, Schizo-Head, Sex-Head, and Death-Head) have a helluva lot more personality than the main characters.  But the most memorable character out the entire film is Doom-Head.  He’s crazy, he’s dangerous, and he’s exceptionally entertaining.  Think Joker, but actually getting bloody on screen. (3 out of 5)

Cast:  The casting is decent.  Really the only person in the movie worth mentioning is Malcolm McDowell.  He keeps the things pretty entertaining and he always makes a great bad guy.  Zombie has to put his wife in the film and it isn’t that she does a bad job, but she does really add to it.  Now, the real start of the show is Richard Brake.  From the minute he first comes on screen, he is just entertaining as hell.  The rest of the cast includes Sheri Moon Zombie, Lew Temple, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, Meg Foster, E. G. Daily, Judy Geeson, Jane Carr, Pancho Moler, David Ury, Torsten Voges, Ginger Lynn, Tracey Walter, and Daniel Roebuck. (3 out of 5)

Visuals:  The presentation isn’t bad although the quick camera zoom ins, quick cuts, and shaky cam do make it hard to follow. In fact, it’s fucking annoying. Whoever thought that was a great idea probably should be punched in the gut.  The gore is handled well enough though to make the kills look effective.  The set pieces are nice and there’s a nice use of the practical effects.  The makeup effects look really good.  I really liked Doom Head’s.  It’s easy to see that DC Comics’ Joker had some inspiration for the character design. (3 out of 5)

Score/Music:  The music is decent though certainly not memorable.  John 5 does a good job of putting in some of the older songs to make it feel like it’s set in the 70s. (3 out of 5)

Writing:  Look, I think Rob Zombie does have some talent, but he clearly has a set of points he must have in his movies.  The characters are so poorly written, it’s ridiculous.  But it is the dialogue that is atrocious.  I’ll never understand why the hell Zombie has to put all this cursing in his films and it certainly doesn’t help the dialogue in this movie.  Also, they killed off half of the characters.  Why introduce so many if you’re going to kill half of them so fast?

And another thing, ass and breast don’t make a movie.  And for as good as it was to look at, it doesn’t help the movie in the least.  Something that bothered me is that the three who orchestrated the this are watching the survivors but there’s literally no evidence of a camera system so how do they know who’s dead.  Also, how in the hell were they calculating the survivor odds.  Seem to me they were just pulling numbers out of their ass.

Also, there’s a serious lack of exposition.  We’re not told who these guys are, where they are, why they’re doing it, how long they’ve been doing it, or why it’s call 31.  The direction is pretty solid but the writing could’ve been done a helluva lot better. (2 out of 5)

The Verdict:  In the end, 31 is a bad movie but it’s bad in a good way.  It can be entertaining and it does have some great moments.  The practical effects are nice, the set pieces good, the performances decent, and the killer clowns were awesome.  However, the film does suffer from forgettable characters, a terrible script, forgettable story, and exceptionally bad dialogue.  31 gets 3 out of 5.