While driving through the New Jersey's Pine Barrens, the car suddenly breaks down and leaves a family stranded in the middle of the woods. While the others wait in the car, the husband goes to look for help. He comes upon a house and asks to use the phone, but instead he gets in trouble. Now, the others are sick of just sitting in the car and waiting around so the wife goes to look for help as well. Meanwhile, there's something out there in the forest, a presence of some kind, but what it is no one is sure of. What's outside there in the forest is something of pure demonic evil, and the family soon wishes that they would've taken another route.
I have to admit that I've been somewhat eager to see Satan's Playground, mostly because of the cool title, but not surprisingly, the title proved to be way cooler than the actual movie. Not saying that the movie was all bad, because it sure had some quality stuff to offer, but as a whole, I can't say that I had a great time watching it. It had things in it that were extremely good and worked wonders, the best one being an old freaky lady sniffing coke (that short scene was hilarious), but it also had a bunch of things that brought it down a notch every once in a while, and came off looking a bit too B at times (not talking about the good B-feel here). I guess it all depends on how you see it, the mood and the expectations. One thing I did not enjoy at all was the fact that it held back on gore way too much when it should've been there. While it wasn't a gore flick, or a flick that you should watch for the sake of seeing gore for that matter, I still felt that most killings off screen were kinda unnecessary, and it would've been better to get to see the whole thing go down each time instead of taking the camera away from the place of action.
Satan's Playground has the style of 70's and 80's horror and that is something that works truly well in the film. It's spooky, a little creepy every now and then but still delivers some black humour that works well, and I was happy to see that it wasn't a too serious flick, the humour balances it out really nicely. Imagine a huge forest, and there's nothing there except for trees and in the middle of it all one crappy old house. Inside the house lives an old lady that looked like a proper witch out of an fairy-tale named Mrs. Leeds. Now, Mrs. Leeds had 13 kids that all had some faults to them, and most of them being dead with only two retared freaky kids left to help her carry out her 'work'. Mrs. Leeds herself is one of the best things that Satan's Playground had to offer since she delivers creepiness as well as some bizarre humour and was a cool nasty fairy-tale like character.
 
Basically, people seem to get stuck out there in the New Jersey's Pine Barrens and in order to get some help, they seek out the only house (Mrs. Leeds house) that seems to be there, but unfortunately for them, the house is inhabited by those who want to do the stranded harm instead of helping them out. But this house alone in the creepy forest, apparently inhabitated by the Jersey Devil, gave the movie a spooky feel and the forest alone created a great eerie atmosphere. There's something out there that's evil, but you don't know what.
I guess the movie pays tribute to Evil Dead as well and has those famous (and great looking) scenes where someone is chased through a forest and you see the one chasing through the eye of the camera. The movie also has some mystery to offer to what's really out there in the forest, the whole Jersey Devil thing and it was too bad Tomaselli didn't take things further with that, because it kinda left me unsatisfied and could've featured more of that. Acting-wise it's all right with Mrs. Leeds being the best character and added some creepiness to the movie. Other than that we get to to see Ellen Sandweiss from Evil Dead, Felissa Rose from Sleepaway Camp and Edwin Neal from the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so the film had a pretty cool cast.
I'm not fully sure exactly where I stand when it comes to Satan's Playground. I really liked some aspects of the film, while at the same time it featured a lot of things that really didn't do it for me. The ending was all right I guess, but didn't leave me fully satisfied either, and also, like I said before, I would like to have seen and heard more about the actual Jersey Devil. I wouldn't say that Satan's Playground is a great horror film, and while it just lasted for 81 minutes, it still felt quite long and towards the end I found myself having problems staying completely focused. But at least it's worth a look because it's not bad, it's like so often more a matter of taste. You might get more out of it than I did.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE:
MOVIE YEAR: 2005
DIRECTOR: Dante Tomaselli
WRITING CREDITS: Dante Tomaselli
GENRE: Horror
CAST: Felissa Rose, Ellen Sandweiss, Edwin Neal
COUNTRY: USA
RUNTIME: 81 min
RATING: 5/10
Satan's Playground Website/IMDB Click here
Satan's Playground Trailer Click here
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