Satan's Playground (2005)

Director:

Dante Tomaselli

Writer:

Dante Tomaselli (writer)

Genre:

Horror

Plot:

Satan's Playground is a chiller with a vacationing family lost in the woods and the Jersey Devil lurking in the Pine Barrens.

Plot Keywords:

Autism | Good Versus Evil | Disturbing | Dysfunctional Family | Backwoods

Cast

Felissa Rose	...	Donna Bruno
Ellen Sandweiss	...	Paula
Edwin Neal	...	Boy
Irma St. Paule	...	Mrs. Leeds
Danny Lopes	...	Sean
Christie Sanford	...	Judy
Ron Millkie	...	Officer Peters
Salvatore Paul Piro	...	Frank Bruno
Raine Brown	...	Prostitute
Robert Zappalorti	...	Cop
Marco Rose	...	Baby Anthony
Maureen Tomaselli	...	Reporter
Jessy Hodges	...	Lost Teen
Chris Farabaugh	...	Stoner
Michael Ryan	...	Whipping Boy

Runtime:

81 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Certification:

Australia:MA (2006)

Filming Locations:

New Jersey, USA

Company:

Em and Me Productions

Movie Connections:

References Sleepaway Camp (1983)

retarded times three

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!