3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Blah, October 28, 2010
This review is from: The Devil's Ground (DVD)
Another random movie I decided to watch on Showtime. The Devil's Ground can be classified as a cheap horror movie that lacks punch. The story begins with a women name Carrie traveling down a dark road and almost runs over a young girl by the name of Amy. Amy appears to be covered in blood and was being chased in the woods by a hostile killer. Carrie decides to help Amy and as the two go down the road Amy explains that she was a environmentalist student at Boston University and she and four other classmates were sent out to Arrowhead to do some research where a mine collapsed on December 19th 1967 killing 239 coal miners. Before the students reached their destination they stopped at a gas station and were warned by the station attendant name Billy which had no arms. Billy told Amy that they were headed to "The Devil's Playground" and they should stay away. They proceeded to go on and ignore the warning and starting digging up bones that they believe belonged to the Indians. However they found teeth with gold fillings and a watch that was encrypted with the year 2002 so they realized that these deaths were more recent so they got all freaked out and decided to leave only be approached by this madmen that was trying to kill them. Amy tries to get back to to the gas station for help but only to find out she wasn't gonna get the help she expected.
The plot of this movie is very basic and simple. Been there done that type of horror movie. The acting was decent at best but just a boring movie overall. The camera shots and editing were horrible. I felt no sympathy for any of the characters and the killer looked like a goofball with his stupid mask. I wasn't intimidated by his presence at all. I mean if someone was chasing me with a machete I'd run too but that's besides the point. The only thing i really enjoyed about this film was the plot twist at the end. I thought I had it figured it out but then threw me for an extra loop. But come to think of it, it hints at it in the begging. That's the only pleasure in this film. Otherwise you're just watching a redundant horror flick and that's no fun!
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Avoid at all costs!, September 25, 2010
This review is from: The Devil's Ground (DVD)
Spoilers included at the end of this review, but I'll separate them and give a warning.
My girlfriend and I decided to watch this film one late night. I understand that it was a low-budget movie without a big studio backing it, but this movie was terrible! And it's not campy or tongue-in-cheek enough to know how bad a movie it is, so you can't even laugh at it as a knowingly bad movie (see all those great SyFy movies made for tv starring Tiffany, Jeremy London, or the dude from BJ & The Bear). Its greatest offense may be that it takes itself seriously and nobody involved in it even realized that it's a truly awful movie - if they had, we might have said, "Oh, I get it, we're *supposed* to want them all dead, it's *supposed* to be bad!" and embraced it on that level. We weren't expecting Shakespeare, but the writing is insufferable, including a prolonged sociopolitical debate that had no bearing on anything else in the movie, and completely disrupted any slightly-building sense of tension. Some lines are so completely contrived and out of touch with whatever emotion the actors have brought to the scene, as to be laughable. I won't even fault the actors - some performances were actually not terrible. Others teetered on horrible, but never quite that level of entertainingly bad you'll find in many B-horror-movie classics. The plot is ridiculous, with any number of head-scratching moments of agonizing confusion. The camera-work is uneven: Often fine, and occasionally nauseating in terms of shaking and lack of clarity (which is a mistake - this film is not done documentary-style where that would be understandable, a la Cloverfield or even Diary of the Dead - it's just a spastic editing/camera gimmick to remind you of better films). If you're a fan of nail-biting, cringe-worthy violence or gore, you won't even get that.
And just when you think the movie is coming mercifully to an end, the last 15 minutes are spent dredging up some imaginative yet incredibly annoying/frustrating plot 'twists' that come up so quickly and are executed so ineptly, that they instantly drain you of any fleeting interest you may have had. Personally, I went from thinking the movie was really bad, to actually getting angry with it. There are no moments earlier in the movie which might hint at any of the ending; re-watching the film won't make you say, "AHA! So that ties in with what happens at the end" - the ending is completely out of left-field. It's as if they suddenly realized how bad the movie has been, and decided to switch gears in a vain, last-ditch attempt to lend the film some intrigue or quality, but it does the exact opposite: You're left feeling they could not figure out a way to wrap it up within the context of the story/plot/world that's been spun for the last hour+, and they had to reach out for something bigger, which in fact turns out to be something completely ridiculous and frustrating.
My girlfriend fell asleep minutes before the 'twist' (I can't begin to tell you how jealous I was of her) and she didn't believe me when I told her what had happened. I left the room to get a handful of aspirin, as she replayed the last 2 minutes, which were enough for her to realize with no small degree of astonishment that I wasn't cruelly pranking her.
My advice: Stay well clear of this one!
[SPOILERS ALERT]:
Amongst a plethora of logic-goofs, here are a few stand-out moments of migraine-inducing pain: A group of grad students is somehow empowered/entitled/licensed to disturb and dig up a Native American sacred burial ground, with no supervision whatsoever, not even from faculty, much less local authorities, representation from any tribal institution, museum personnel, etc. Then they stumble on a mass grave of homicidal maniacs... Get out of Dodge & call the police? Or spend the afternoon corrupting evidence, disturbing a crime scene, and digging up people's remains for no tangible purpose other than morbid curiosity? Well of course the latter. And these aren't written to be your typical vapid teens out on a romp, they're supposedly intelligent graduate students.
There's a death involving an RV pinning a woman to a tree... Of course, the RV is off-roads, in a grassy clearing, accelerating from a dead-stop, and the woman is dozens of yards away, with plenty of notice and no shortage of maneuverable, escape-friendly wide-open space. Last time I checked, RV's aren't great at quick bursts of acceleration or tight turns, most especially off-road. Coincidentally, the scene where the victim sees the RV start up menacingly, as she stands there watching it in a state of alarm, cuts to a narration scene, before cutting back to her conveniently trapped against the tree. This way, at least, your imagination can fill in all the blanks and you don't have to actually watch the absurd process of her running to a tree, turning around to face the slowly-approaching winnebago, and waiting 2-3 minutes for the RV to get there and gradually pin her against it, without enough speed or force, of course, for the massive camper to cause any damage to the tree behind her.
How many times can you watch people stand watching their friends get murdered, screaming, but never doing either of the obvious reactions: heroically try to intercede/stop the murders, or (perhaps a more understandable reaction) run like hell. They do neither. They stand and scream. And stand. And then, after the murders are completed, and you've had time to gasp at the lackluster manner of execution, then they eventually realize they should run. For an incredibly short distance, at which point they assume they're safe. Rinse & repeat. Some of the writing is simply tortuous... After one character has essentially confessed to his involvement in the murders, the heroine essentially asks him to verify that in case anyone missed the first time.
In a word: Argh.
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