Tim Brayton here, to talk to everybody about something particularly close to my heart, and particularly useless even in the grand scheme of cinema: the crushing lack of artistry and personality in American horror movies these days.

The issue is brought to mind by the release this week of The Lords of Salem, the fifth film directed by sometime heavy metal rocker Rob Zombie. I have not, at this writing, seen The Lords of Salem, and based on Zombie’s previous work, it’s very likely that I’m going to think it’s pretty terrible. But I am, anyway, more excited to see this than I have been for any other wide-release film in 2013, no matter how bad it’s going to be, because Zombie the filmmaker has consistently been responsible for horror films of the rarest sort: ones where you can actually tell how much the person making them cares about the work.