HELL'S GROUND (2007)

On the first day of Halloween, my boo love gave to me ... a mace-slinging asexual maniac in a burqa!

THE CARD:

The Cast of the Pakistan 90210, a Little Person Zombie, an Exotic Freudian Slasher Doof, a Cheesecake Magnate Director/Producer, and the Islamabad Elizabeth Pena.

More details here.

THE ANGLE:

A bunch of bored Pakistani teens load up a junky tap-tap van in search of good ol’ sex, drugs, and rock-in-roll. The surge is working! The gang hits the road towards a super popular rock concert and along the way they encounter the shoddily dressed living dead, get mixed up with some bad roadside dope sold by the Pakistani Dracula, accidentally run over a confused local yokel, and piss-off the Taliban who’ve retreated safely into an Oedipal Complex. Confused? Well, it doesn’t get any better. An anti-pollution demonstration diverts them from the main road and they are forced to travel down a spooky country road riddled with rumors of villagers transforming into zombies after drinking poo-lluted water. After some road trip banter and mild sexual innuendo, they do encounter zombies but kinda just hit the accelerator and leave the zombies in their dust. End of zombie appearance. No, really. Oh, and one of the teens gets bitten. He gets really sick, never becomes a zombie, and is pretty much forgotten in the end. They chalk-up the undead encounter to bad drugs or something. Later, they get stuck in the mud, ask a crazed man wandering the dark road for help, and end up killing him. They split up for some reason to get help. At this point, I’m begging for a dance sequence that never comes. Instead, a burqa-wearing killer awaits them in the forest. Our gang gets chased around, some get offed with sabers and morning-stars, and the survivors come across a witch-like lady who helps them out until she discovers that they killed the crazy guy who happened to be her son. Cut to a predictable explanation for the burqa-killer and voila: dumb horror movie cliché-ville. The only exciting moment was the appearance of the midget zombie. Midget MUSLIM zombie, that is!

THE FINISHER:

Billed as the first and only Pakistani zombie film to date, Hell's Ground is not only decidedly short on zombies, it also proves that teenagers are stupid the world over. The film was produced independently by a Pakistani film historian and deli-owner that personally financed the project. Unfortunately, the film never received a commercial release in its home country. The gore effects were uninspired, even for a low budget zombie movie. The burqa killer shtick kept things interesting at least visually until the predictable end. Also disappointing was the attempt at social commentary (pollution, religious extremism) which emerged promisingly at the beginning, but was never fully realized. Although I admire the enthusiasm for the genre and recognize that this is quite a step for the Pakistani film industry, the execution fell flat mostly due to the fact that the story shifted startlingly in the middle of the film. If the deli-owner/producer can keep on hanging on, watch less bad American horror movies, and stay away from cliché and cheap splatter, then we can only hope for better things from Pakistan. Well, that and Bin Laden.