When it comes to imagination, Rob Zombie’s life has provided the director with a lot over the decades. His love of horror was nurtured by many nights in front of the TV screen catching up on all things scary. His family’s work in a traveling circus had a direct impact on the director’s artistic approach to his music and films, the most obvious example being his debut, ‘House of 1000 Corpses’.
Resuming the role of music video director in the 90s was by far the best training ground for visuals Zombie could have had. Music videos are walking advertisements to tickle a listener’s visual sensibility. The more striking the image, the more likely someone is to rip off an album even if the single was average. The current lack of memorization in visuals is a bone of contention with Zombie and, as he explained, what drives him in filmmaking:
“Once a movie like ‘Paranormal Activity’ comes out and becomes popular – and it’s a perfectly fine and valid movie – everyone starts copying it. It all becomes a found movie that looks like someone who shot it with his phone. The art of cinema seems to be thrown away. The cinematography is gone, and the appearance of everything becomes irrelevant. You lose the memorable images; everything seems to have been shot at night with a security camera .That was one of the things I wanted to bring back: that feeling of memorable imagery in a horror movie.”
