Hell's Grounds (Pakistan, 2007)

Pakistan’s first gore flick turned out to be exactly what I feared it would be: An enthusiastic but ultimately disappointing amateur attempt. It’s sloppy, light on innovative ideas, and while enthusiastic for the genre, it still doesn’t seem to know how to deliver the goods.

Four kids lie to their parents and hit the road en route to a big rock concert. They get diverted by a political presentation and after a way too long set-up are attacked by zombies, chased by a burka clad medieval mace swinging maniacs and are one by one turned into food for the local meat party.

The mix of all these different ideas a mix that could lead to a wild ride, but director/writer Omar Khan doesn’t know what to do with them all. The zombie sub-plot is introduced and dropped after one scene. The serial killer ‘action’ can be summed up with “Burkaman chases victim through fog. He swings the mace. Rinse. Repeat”. And to sum up the gore in one word: Lame. It happens mostly off screen, is few and far between and isn’t creative at all (Stabbing, Mace Head Squish, and lamest kill of them all…The NECK SNAP) There’s also a weird use of freezing the frame and making it look like a comic book panel which is neat at first, but then put to use during incredibly distracting moments. There’s a few positive here, like the lighting and camera-work which is really professional for such a low budget flick, which is a shame because there’s nothing interesting happen within it.

I can’t recommended Hell’s Ground to anyone other than the people obsessed for a little (and I mean little) gore or the novelty of seeing a splatter flick from a country that has never done it be fore. The director seems to like doing this and is enthused by all it all, so I I hope he learns from ALL his mistakes and goes balls out on his next project.

DVD: A commentary track, a fifteen minute making of, a ten minute premiere video and an mile a minute commentary track by the director are more fun than the actual film itself. After Dark Film has been bringing us rare foreign films for a while now and this is the first time they lay out the Extra Features action, sometimes I hope they do further into the future.