You All Say that: Why Se7en is Scarier than The Devil's Rejects

Otis Driftwood: "I am the devil, and I am here to do the devil's work."

The Devil's Rejects is one of the most genuinely disturbing horror films ever made, and I've watched it exactly twice. Once in my twenties, and once last week. Both times it delivered. Rob Zombie's 2005 follow-up to House of 1000 Corpses is gorier, more graphic, and more relentlessly violent than almost anything in the horror canon. And yet it didn't destroy me the way Se7en did, twenty years ago. The violence was worse; the damage was less.

I'll come back to why.

First, I want to talk about the line that made my skin crawl. Surprisingly, it wasn't what I opened with: "I am the devil, and I am here to do the devil's work," which is the one everyone remembers and quotes and prints on t-shirts. Otis, one of our three murderers who serve as the protagonists of this film (yes, you heard that right), says that line to a man he's about to kill, and it's theatrical, like a menacing line he's practiced in the mirror many times. It was scary, sure, and it gave me a chill. But it was the kind of scary where you're proudly nodding at the actor. "Holy shit, that was cold, dude. You nailed it."

There was another line that didn't get put on t-shirts and hardly registers as a blip in the internet fandom. A victim, on the ground, staring up at Otis, summons every ounce of courage he has left and spits out, "Fuck you."

And Otis, utterly unbothered, replies: "That's what they all say. 'Fuck you.' Well, it ain't gonna save you. It don't scare me none, and it don't suddenly make you a fucking hero."

That's the one. The line that ripped me out of my film critic role and put me on the ground, staring up at a murderer. The first time I heard it, I felt like my throat was closing.