So looking for some good horror movies I glanced upon the title and cover for this film. And then I see the name Daryl Hannah attached to it as it’s leading actress. Might be good, so let’s take a look at it. Directed & written by Michael Barfaro, The Devil’s Ground is a 2009 Canadian horror, slasher-ish movie which he claims is based on a true story. The movie was shot on a low budget, which is very obvious to see and looks like it was shot in the Czech Republic. The cast is mostly unknowns with the exception of Daryl Hannah and, if you are watching tv’s Rogue, Leah Gibson – who has a memorable realistic sex scene against a wall to wall sliding door. Yowza!
As the movie starts we see a distraught and slightly bloodied Amy Singer (Gibson) running in the woods with a machete in her hands. She comes across a body being burned, which causes her to panic and puke, and run in the opposite direction, dropping the machete. A masked figure picks it up and runs behind her but loses sight of her as she hid into a small covered hole in the ground. Next we see Carrie Mitchell driving through the country (she is on a drive from California headed to Maine in honour of her husband who went missing while on a similar drive) and stopping for gas. She meets the big burly gas station attendant Jimmy, who advices her to stay in a hotel as it as already 9pm but she goes on. A while later she almost hits Amy on the road and gives her a lift when she sees that the young girl needs help. Amy proceeds to tell her the story.
Amy that tells that her friends from the Boston University Mike, Greg, Tammy and Lisa and she had traveled in a RV to Arrowhead to research the area as part of a discipline in their course. When they stopped in a gas station, the attendant Billy advised them to avoid the place in Bradford City called “Devil’s Playground” by the locals. Amy is the only one nice to Billy, who has lost both hands and is using a crude fake metal device on both to pick & hold things. As they stop at night, their RV is rocked back and forth – the students can’t find anyone when they step out and Mike thinks it’s Billy & his friends out for revenge. The next morning while digging in an area where a mine collapsed on 19 December 1967 killing 239 coal miners, they find preserved bones that they believe belonged to the Indians. However, when they find teeth with golf fillings and a watch on the wrist of an arm, they realize that the deaths have recently occurred and they are in a dangerous location. Ok now, when you are digging and you find skeletons of humans – stop fucking digging and go call the police! Or drive away and get the cops if you can’t get mobile reception. Instead these idiots keep digging and unearth a bunch more of these dead bodies in various stages of decay! As they finally stop in the evening, they find someone in their RV who has hotwired the vehicle and proceeds to attack at them. Lisa is killed immediately when the RV crushes her against a tree and the others run away. The masked burly figure takes a machete & a shotgun and Mike is killed next.
The next morning Tammy is killed as she comes back to join the other two after moving aside to take a pee in the woods (this girl pees twice in the morning and shame she dies at this point cause she is the hottie of all the women) and then it’s only Greg & Amy. Greg falls into a deep hole, so he gives Amy a map with the graves spots marked and makes her go for help. She goes to the gas station and asks Billy for help – only he is the burly masked man’s brother! Billy explains that due to the toxic waste dumped by a plant in the area, the water is bad and affected a lot of people, including their mother and Tobey the brother who is mentally deranged. Tobey reaches the gas station at this point and Jimmy sends him back to get the map from Greg. Amy uses this distraction to hide the map in a cooler and when Jimmy drinks a coke, she smashes the bottle against him and soon kills him with a machete. She takes a jeep and head back to find Greg but instead finds his dead. Tobey then chases her – we then see her being caught by him. At this point of the narration Carrie asks her how she got away but Amy has no recollection of that. Carrie promises to help her and stops at a different gas station to call the police and to fill her car’s tank. When she tells the police the story, they rebuke her for playing a practical joke and tell her that Amy Singer was found dead 5 years ago!!
Yes, Amy is a ghost and vanishes from the car. Carrie steps out and finds her husband’s vehicle in the back (he was obviously killed here too) and sees a huge man approaching her. She runs and stumbles and the man, Jimmy clams her down. He says that he is the twin brother of Tobey and Billy’s older brother but he moved out from them when they started killing people. Now he wants to end the killing and help her. When Tobey attacks the two twins fight but a young gas station attendant (probably the young boy from 5 years ago who is briefly shown and now grown up a bit) shoots Jimmy and let’s Tobey use the machete to kill Carrie. Thus ends the movie.
There are some good elements to the movie but the cast has problems with some bad acting and bad dialogues. It does give a few scares and jumps. For that 5.5 outta 10!
