Dante Tomaselli, while obviously a big horror fan, still has yet to make a good horror movie. His latest, "Satan's Playground", while better than his previous genre venture "Horror", still isn't any good.
The plot: A generally unlikeable family (which includes "Sleepaway Camp" star Felicia Rose and "Evil Dead" girl Elen Sandweiss) find themselves trapped in the woods of Jersey. They run into another small family, this one (obviously) made up of psychopaths. Oh, and there's the Jersey Devil.
Throughout the movie (and in it's commentary), Tomaselli talks a lot about "nightmare logic" and so forth. While such a thing worked for directors like Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, here is backfires on Tomaselli. This actually seems to be one of the biggest problems with his movies: he has no idea how to correctly tell a story, or make anything remotely scary. Sure, there is some bloodshed (including an awesome slit throat), some bludgeoning, Satan worshipers, and other things, but it just feels tacked on, as if he thought throwing things in randomly (the Satan worshipers sub-plot goes nowhere, and is unneeded) will make it scary. Unfortunately, he seems to forget that things such as atmosphere and dread are what made so many of the movies he loves memorable, thus making the whole movie feel unnecessary and contrived.
Maybe next time, he will manage to hit a home run. Until then, it seem's poor Dante will continue to make uninvolved, senseless horror without a point or a scare in tact.
The plot: A generally unlikeable family (which includes "Sleepaway Camp" star Felicia Rose and "Evil Dead" girl Elen Sandweiss) find themselves trapped in the woods of Jersey. They run into another small family, this one (obviously) made up of psychopaths. Oh, and there's the Jersey Devil.
Throughout the movie (and in it's commentary), Tomaselli talks a lot about "nightmare logic" and so forth. While such a thing worked for directors like Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, here is backfires on Tomaselli. This actually seems to be one of the biggest problems with his movies: he has no idea how to correctly tell a story, or make anything remotely scary. Sure, there is some bloodshed (including an awesome slit throat), some bludgeoning, Satan worshipers, and other things, but it just feels tacked on, as if he thought throwing things in randomly (the Satan worshipers sub-plot goes nowhere, and is unneeded) will make it scary. Unfortunately, he seems to forget that things such as atmosphere and dread are what made so many of the movies he loves memorable, thus making the whole movie feel unnecessary and contrived.
Maybe next time, he will manage to hit a home run. Until then, it seem's poor Dante will continue to make uninvolved, senseless horror without a point or a scare in tact.