Rob Zombie initiated his “Firefly Trilogy” with 2003’s House of 1000 Corpses and continued it via 2005’s The Devil’s Rejects. 14 years later, 2019’s 3 From Hell completed the series.

After their wild murder sprees, “Devil’s Rejects” Baby Firefly (Sheri Moon Zombie), Otis B. Driftwood (Bill Moseley) and Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig) find themselves imprisoned. However, Otis escapes.

While on the lam, Otis partners with his half-brother Winslow "Foxy" Coltrane (Richard Brake) to get Baby out as well. Free from the clink, Baby, Otis and Foxy go on another bloody escapade, one that forces them to fight off various folks who pursue them.

When I watched Corpses, I thought it delivered a poorly made “grindhouse” flick that existed as a collection of violence without other purpose. When I watched Rejects, I thought it delivered a poorly made “grindhouse” flick that existed as a collection of violence without other purpose.

Unsurprisingly, this sent me into Hell without much optimism it’d finish the “Firefly Trilogy” on a high note. However, I thought perhaps the added 14 years of directorial experience might mean a stronger experience.

After all, Corpses and Rejects existed as Zombie’s first and second features. With an additional five flicks under his belt between 2005 and 2019, surely he learned and grew as a filmmaker, right?

To some degree, this becomes the case, as Hell feels a bit better executed. However, Zombie’s growth feels minimal, as I find little to separate Hell from its lousy predecessors.

As occurred with the prior two films, Hell exists less as a coherent narrative and more as a collection of scenes. In turn, these serve no purpose beyond basic sadism and violence.

Zombie also remains in love with his own content to the point where he undercuts the flick’s effectiveness via an extended running time. As I mentioned in my review of Rejects, while Corpses came with many problems, at least it clocked in at an efficient 88 minutes.

Its relative success apparently left Zombie high on his own supply, as the saying goes. He pushed Rejects to 109 minutes – 111 minutes for the unrated cut – and Hell extends to 115 minutes.

Unless they come from actual talented filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, “grindhouse” projects like this really seem better suited to that 90-minute range. Zombie’s no QT and he can’t fill all that space well.

Hell really does lollygag and take its own sweet time to go anywhere. The main plot related to the Rejects on the lam doesn’t even kick in until about halfway through the film.

Zombie fails to populate the initial 55 minutes with much beyond the usual gore and crudeness. When the Rejects unite, one expects a more purposeful narrative but none arrives.

Oddly, rather than ratchet up the drama, Zombie chooses to leave us with sluggish pacing and pointless exercises in nothingness. As soon as the characters head out on the road, we fund ourselves stuck in an interminable and pointless sojourn in a motel.

A good filmmaker would push along the Rejects’ move toward freedom immediately. Instead, Zombie indulges in a long sequence with little narrative purpose.

Even when the Rejects hit the road, Zombie focuses on silliness with no actual plot involved. The movie leans away from its usual violence and goes into attempted comedy a lot of the time during these scenes.

“Attempted” remains the key phrase, as Hell brings no actual laughs. Instead, it just rambles along without coherence or purpose.

Of course, eventually Zombie gets back to the blood ‘n’ guts. However, it takes a while, largely thanks to Zombie’s self-indulgence.

As far as I can tell, huge swaths of Hell serve no purpose other than to amuse Zombie. We get tons of utterly superfluous scenes that would be better served with the pursuit of the actual plot.

Well, what plot we get, as this remains a thin narrative. Still, Hell could offer a decent “fugitives on the run” tale if Zombie focused on that side of things.

Instead, we find only the skimpiest of stories here and acres of cinematic filler. I can’t claim that a shorter/more efficient Hell would deliver a good movie, but at least it would feel tighter and more intentional.

But Zombie lacks the discipline to create a flick that goes anywhere. Sluggish and without coherence, 3 From Hell turns into a chore to watch.

Note that the Blu-ray provides an unrated version of Hell. Apparently it runs a mere 41 seconds longer than the “R”-rated edition and gets those extra seconds from added violence and profanity but nothing that impacts story/characters.

3 From Hell appears in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 on this Blu-ray Disc. Despite an intentionally “difficult” source, the image tended to hold up fine.

Though shot on high-res digital cameras, chunks of the movie became intentionally degraded to resemble 16mm. This meant parts of the flick leaned soft and flat and also came with fake “print flaws”.

However, that trend didn’t persist through the whole movie, so much of it looked very good. This meant most of the flick displayed pretty solid delineation outside of sporadic stylized softness.

No issues with jagged edges or shimmering materialized, and I saw no edge haloes. Grain was fake and fairly heavy, and any print “flaws” we witnessed came as intentional “distressing” for the grindhouse vibe.

The film’s palette mixed greens, teal, red, amber, and orange. They also went with intense visual choices that made them vivid within those decisions.

Blacks seemed fairly deep and dense, while low-light shots offered appropriate clarity. Outside of intentionally “dated” elements, this wound up as an attractive image.

With a fair amount of action, the movie’s DTS-HD MA 7.1 worked reasonably well, even if it didn’t quite dazzle. The various violent scenes used the spectrum in a positive manner.

Score also emanated from the different channels to open up the soundfield. The soundscape felt a little more restrained at times than I’d expect given the nature of the film, but it still became more than competent.

Audio quality worked fine, with speech that felt concise and distinctive. Music appeared full and rich.

Effects brought good clarity and punch. All of this gave us a good though not great track.

When we shift to extras, we find an audio commentary from writer/director Rob Zombie. He delivers a running, screen-specific look at story/characters and changes necessitated by issues with one actor’s illness, cast and performances, sets and locations, stunts, action and effects, music, influences, and connected elements.

Zombie’s commentaries for the first two flicks in the trilogy suffered from one moderate issue: he devoted too much of those tracks to simple descriptions of what we watched. While he does this some for Hell, it becomes much less of a drag.

This allows Zombie to give us a pretty solid view of the production. He touches on a lot of useful topics and ensures we get a largely appealing commentary.

Called To Hell and Back, a multi-part documentary runs a sizable one hour, 34 minutes, 28 seconds. It includes remarks from Zombie, editor Glenn Garland, script supervisor Renetta Amador, prop master Theresa Corvino, costume designer Rosa Vazquez, production designer Shawn McKinny, assistant props Jackie Trudel, stunt coordinator Stephen Dunleavy, SFX designer Wayne Toth, VFX supervisor Eugene Armencha, VFX producer Steven Addair, weapons specialist Anthony De Longis, snake wrangler Josh Ruffell, lead digital artist Brian Hayman, and actors Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Sylvia Jeffries, David Ury, Tracee Leigh, Clint Howard, Danny Trejo, Kevin Jackson, Dan Roebuck, Dee Wallace, Pancho Moler, and Matthew Willig.

"Back" examines the decision to continue the Firefly saga, influences and stylistic choices, cast, characters and performances, the rapid pace of the shoot, photography, costumes and props, stunts, effects, sets and locations. Inevitably some information repeats from the commentary, but we get a lot of good shots from the production and get a nice variety of perspectives to make this a solid program.

The disc opens with ads for 31 and John Wick Chapter 3. No trailer for Hell appears here.

Rob Zombie completes his ‘Firefly Trilogy’ with a thud. Like its predecessors, 3 From Hell becomes another tedious genre exercise without charm or thrills. The Blu-ray delivers generally positive picture and audio along with some informative supplements. Zombie fans will probably like Hell but for the rest of us, it becomes a dud.