Review – Satan’s Playground

Writer / director Dante Tomaselli must have watched Evil Dead and Texas Chainsaw Massacre hundreds of times but never seen another movie of any kind. Even that might have been okay, but he appears to have learned nothing from his favorites beyond how to ape their less effective elements. The plot plays out like something an eight-year-old child would make up, with family stuck in the woods wandering off one by one to fall victim to this stock horror or that. I rented this almost exclusively because the box promised me the Jersey Devil, a monster that kills a couple of people without appearing in the movie as anything beyond annoying POV shots. I still firmly believe that somewhere out in the Pine Barrens lurks a really good horror movie. However, it’ll have to just keep lurking at least a little longer. Wish I’d skipped it