Fantastic Fest Day 6
On day 6 I didnt really have much of a choice on what to watch. Ive already seen The Last Winter, Hell's Fever, The Girl Next Door, Flash Point, Spiral, The Cold Hour and Exte. So my only choice was the crazy Pakistani horror movie called Hell's Ground.

Hell's Ground aka Zibahkhana
Now this is the type of movie I was looking for more of a Fantastic Fest. A low budget fun movie that I might never get a chance to see again in a theater setting. Most of these will be out on dvd shortly which im sure its perfectly fine to see i there but this is a kind of movie that performs better with a crowd.
Now ill be honest this movie is not good in a traditional sense. The plot is convoluted, the third act drags a little and the acting is not very good. But the movie is so different and crazy it makes up for anything it lacks. Ive never seen any type of Pakistan or Indian movie for that instance so it was interesting to see some of the different cultural type of things and the different locations. Im sure that most Paki's (is that derogatory?) would say these kids arent the typical kids in Pakistan but I didnt care. It was nice to see some f*&kup's from other countries besides just Americans and British. The plot is basically about a group of 5 kids with different backgrounds and religions for that matter that get lie to their parents, get in a van and make a road trip to see a rock concert. They never played the music of the band they were going to see cuz it would have been interesting to see what they consider rock. Anyways there are a couple of stoner kids, a rebel, a Catholic girl, and a quiet "good" boy. One thing that was very strange is the movie was half English half Punjabi ?. The kids went back and forth from each language which made for a few times of unintentional laughs. One kid in particular only talked English except for one sentence in the whole movie. Getting back to the plot, the movie starts with news reports about this village that has diseased water that is making the people sick. So the second crazy encounter the kids come up on is a group of villagers (midget included) who are sick and zombie like that come and attack the van. There is a funny scene of the zombie midget who climbs in then gets tossed out the door by one of the kids. After the first 30 minutes of the movie the zombie plot gets thrown out the window and the rest of the movie becomes a survival horror slasher pic. Its like they knew the budget was limited and decided to go a different route with the movie. Most movies this would have been a death sentence but for some odd reason it fit perfect with the tone of the movie.
The rest of the movie is pretty much an homage to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They pick up a crazy hitchhiker then later they run out in the woods to a house where there is a burka wearing crazy killer that chases them with a huge ball and chain mace! One of the girls even pull a Haute Tension and use a barbed wire stick to attack the killer.
Overall the movie was a blast to watch and it worked because it was so odd. It wasn't close to being my favorite yet but I did have a good time watching it. If you are tired of the same ol crap and want to see something different then i recommend checking this out when its released later from Mondo Macabro.