Satan's Playground

I am tired of wasting my time with pathetic horror. The worst acting you've ever seen, and you immediately hope all of the main characters die soon.The movie had just started when you get the "Did you hear that?" line. Oh my God...I have finally realized that there is no American horror any more. The production value is castrated by amateurish acting. American horror needs something other than "a band of crazies out in the wilderness terrorizing a family." The emphasis on the Home Depot "scary" door knocker is totally laughable. The only redeeming factor is a trailer for Evil Dead, which is a much better film.I stopped this one fast and sailed it across the room.

With SATAN'S PLAYGROUND, Director Dante Tomaselli takes the bleak nightmare world of his last effort, HORROR, and fuses it with a more linear story line. It's a supernatural monster movie with a crazy, demonic twist. Within its kitchen sink of terrors are the legendary Jersey Devil, a lunatic family, and human sacrifice.

1980's cult horror icons Ellen Sandweiss and Felissa Rose play sisters Paula and Donna, who, along with Paula's baby and Donna's husband and autistic son, find themselves up against the aforementioned dangers. Also along for the ride is Edwin Neal, who pretty much reprises his bat$h!t role from THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.

Tomaselli makes use of the Pine Barrens, swooping his camera around a la EVIL DEAD. People seem to either hate this movie utterly, or see it as a masterpiece. In reality, it's somewhere in between these extremes, deserving none of the hyperbole of either side. Still, it is worth seeing...

I wanted to give this movie a chance, even after the texas chainsaw massacre like start.

Four characters with baby in car driving through middle of nowhere, with nothing engaging to say.

When they break down & we get to the action it did start promisingly however after the initial victim departs it all goes swiftly downhill & i lost interest fast. The title is a misnomer, you only get to see devil worshippers in one scene & thats your lot, theyre not integral to the storyline at all. The continuity is poor & wardrobe lacking (i thought county cops in tennesee wore brown or green uniforms, surely black is a City cop outfit?) The one saving grace is a great performance by the Mrs Leeds character who holds your attention & the film together.

I could go on but why waste time? Late night film fare, to fall asleep to. Is the Jersey Devil supposed to be invisible??? I think they blew most of the budget on the door knocker !

Okay, I first heard of this film with the return of Ellen Sandweiss who was in Evil Dead and despite any other cinematic features she may have been apart of, E.D. was the last I had saw her. And no, it's not that I think Ellen's actings skills are superb, it's not because she was raped by a tree (although that was dope), but it's because I find her attractive-

Okay, so movie on, I do agree with the previous reviewer on how there was/is a certain buzz about this film and so I went to my local crap-busters to see if they had a copy in stock. Luckily, they did and so I rented it and went home to see what was all the hype about.

Basically, in a nutshell, the movie is about all the crazy things that happen in the Pine Barrens of S. New Jersey. You got a retarded psychopathic family, satanists, and the Jersey Devil or more appropriate-The Jersey translucent bat.

I like abstract, atmospheric, dark ambient stuff but a film like this fails in comparison with "The Wendigo."

The things that I liked about the movie was the part of Grandma Leeds (played by Irma St. Paule) sniffing cocaine (infact, her performance throughout was rather good), the stupid hiker guy who got his throat slashed by the Jersey translucent bat, and the guy who played Sean,the retarded son (he did a good job on acting retar; oops, "special" with the drool included), and of course the appearance of Felicia Rose (Mama-Mia).

What I didn't like about the movie was noticing that something wasn't all too there with them before they found the Leeds. Ellen's character was a bit slow and out there. The only normal guy in the movie was the pops (the big Jersey Italian guy) before he got cranially reamed by a mallet, the cop who just appeared out of nowhere at the Leed's house because he had a complaint about devilworshipping kids whipping people on their front lawn, when the cop gets slashed and killed in his patrol car (which was parked down the dirt road from where the station wagon was), Ellen lifts her head from the cover later and notices the cop car but not paying attention to when the guy was getting killed (wtf), and the slow, weird motions of the characters like when Felicia's running (yes, I know it was suppose to be abstract), and the retarded, psycho looking fat heffer of a girl with gray eyes smiling all crazy, and last but not least everybody at the hospital near the end acting all unattached to the survivor.

Now, first off if I'd seen a psycho looking girl with gray eyes smiling all crazy in the woods, I'd know something's up and if I went into some old torn down shack of a house where it looked crazy and humanly impossible of living in, that would be point two.

Question 1: And did you notice that nobody has cellphones at all? Question 2: What do you think happened to the baby?

By looking at a movie within the first 3 minutes, I know if it's good or not and I like things to be realistic especially for a (it could happen type of movie) and this failed miserably for my expectations.

Of course, there's people all in the woods of the great pine barrens Satanists, hikers, other girls with car trouble, the Jersey translucent devil bat, hence Satan's playground.

One thing that I think I understand in a sub level is grandma Leeds is a witch, the Jersey translucent devil bat is her familiar/demon, and the satanist perform rituals on her lawn because that's what we just do, lol. The hints to this is because in dialog with Sean, she said that she had 13 kids who all were bad. Whatever, I like Wendigo because for me it's more grounded and it brings the darkness more to realistic level.

But don't take my word for it, what I might hate would be genius to you and vice versa.

A family in New Jersey drives along an isolated road, and the father is falling asleep at the wheel. His wife (I thought at first she was his daughter) mainly bitches at him, and he falls asleep two or three times since nobody has the sense to replace him behind the wheel. Their station wagon gets stuck in mud alongside a road. They're unable to push it out and don't try to put anything under the wheels for traction. The father walks into the woods to find help for some reason, rather than walking down the road. He comes across a boarded- up house and asks for a phone.

What seems like like hours later, the wife (Felissa Rose) goes off in the woods in the same direction. Somehow she winds up at the same house, and asks for the phone. While she had earlier said that her son was foaming at the mouth in the back seat of the car because he was scared and not because of a seizure, at the house she says her autistic eighteen- year-old son was having a seizure. She also says that her husband has seen a house in the woods - he hadn't. The old woman at the house mentions she has thirteen children, two of them living at home, both of them in their forties and retarded.

A cop stops by the house. He says there had been some kids dressed up in Halloween costumes outside. He hears Felissa calling for help in the basement, but accepts the old woman's explanation that it's a stray cat. Dumb! He returns to his car, an old beater with a blue light on top. He gets attacked by something from the sky, and these minor injuries apparently kill him. Despite the death of a police officer, later in the movie they send out just one officer and one of the victims to check the house!

Back at the car, the sister sees the cop's car parked in front of the station wagon. Why didn't he check the station wagon before going to the house? How did he see the people outside the house when it was far in the woods? How did he return to his car so quickly? This is a movie with lots of writing and continuity problems.

Sis leaves her baby in the car when she checks the police car, and naturally it's gone when she returns. She goes into the woods, also manages to come across the same house, and asks to use the phone. She freaks out there, and scares a teenage girl who stopped by the house to use the phone. Surprising the old lady's palm reading business wasn't more popular at such a popular location!

The autistic son had gone into the woods also and knocked himself out. He too goes to the house, and eventually gets sucked into the ground, like a character in Tomaselli's Desecration, which is more interesting than this movie!

And on it goes. Much of the musical score is quite poor, particularly the instrumental song that is apparently supposed to be playing on the radio. The acting is just execrable, almost all-around. I couldn't say whether this was the casting or the direction of the actors. Ellen Sandweiss is OK, and attractive, but has a small role. There are horror clichés aplenty, like one character finding it easier to jump out what is apparently a third story window, than trying to break through a thin first-story door with a large window in it. The ending is pathetic, a steal from Evil Dead that I suppose is meant as a tribute, but just feels cheap.

Avoid!