Ah, a free movie weekend. The promotional wonder that costly movie channels throw at us every once in a while to get us to pay for their monthly service. But you'd think that if they want us to actually pay monthly for the same rotation of oh, 20 movies they show (mostly bad), they would at least bring out their best and brightest for the free weekend to draw us in. Nah. It was a combo of bad, should have been good but it was bad, and the complete throw-aways. Not something I'm going to pay monthly for. If I'm going to try a movie service, it's gonna be Netflix, at least they have a selection that I can choose WHEN I want to see them, not wait months 'till they put it on the list. And with that small whine let's get to our first movie in this craptacular weekend:
Movies So Bad They Make You Say "What In The Blazes Did I Just Watch?"
The Cycle aka The Devil's Ground (2008)
You've gotta love Chiller. For those on satellite, it's a prime source of all things horror - mostly horrible, but all horror. And I love their 'premieres' on Friday nights - pretending to bring out something new and exciting, but showing you stuff like this. And we start:
A teenage girl is running hysterically through the forest - she comes upon a man hung in a tree and burning. In terror she hides in a hole from - someone. All we see is the shadow of a man with a machete. As soon as she thinks it's safe, she takes of running again...
Carrie (Daryl Hannah in a why-the-hell-are-you-in-this role) is driving from California to Bangor, Maine in tribute of her deceased husband. While on a backroad somewhere short of Maine, she stops at night at a gas station. Although the very hairy attendant named Jimmy is scary looking and it's late, he's nice to her and advises that she stop at a hotel instead of driving through. She's movie-stupid so she refuses and decides to drive anyway. He asks again, but she's gonna go. On a small, dark road she's chain smoking, and while lighting another one up she looks out and sees a girl standing in the middle of the road. The girl is bloody and hysterical. Yes, it's going to be one of those movies. Carrie takes her into the car. She asks the date - Carrie tells her and she cries "It's only been two days." "What happened?" Carrie asks to get the movie going and this is what we hear:
Amy Singer (Leah Gibson), the girl in her car, together with four of her friends are from Boston University and as a way to get a sure passing grade, at the suggestion of their professor they decide to investigate and take 'soil samples' of a former mine. The real goal is to hopefully find a sacred Indian burial ground that's supposed to be there. If they can do that, there will be no new mining. This is in Arrowhead, a location where in 1967 there was a tragic mining accident, killing 239 miners. They stop at a gas station where the attendant comes out, telling them they have to pump the gas themselves as he has no arms. While the others are smirking and making jokes about him (behind his back) Amy is very nice and apologetic about her jerk friends. We see a small boy that the armless man, Billy, commands to go back inside. Amy wanders around the back and sees something in the shed chained up - but Billy keeps her from looking closer. 
Billy tells the students that they should stay away from Bradford City, where the place is called 'The Devil's Playground'. It's the site where the miners died and the locals consider it a bad place. They of course also being movie-stupid as well as total douchebags (Amy was the only likable one in the group) scoff and continue on. Best line: One of the students defending the use of mines and oil drilling because we depend on fossil fuels is told he is perfect to become a "Fox News Junkie". That's it folks, it just gets worse from here.
Let's cut to the deaths quickly: The students find the site easily enough, but when they start their 'dig', not only are they finding arrowheads and possible Indian bones, they are also finding newer corpses, with jewelry as recent as two years gone in very shallow graves all over the place. They realize there's a psycho out here. They mark the location on a map. And then start to die. Number one (do you really care which one?) is smashed against a tree with their own Winnebago, then the man with a ski mask, machete and rifle slashes her to death. Number two gets his hand sliced off before he's cut to ribbons. Number three is shot to death and 'double tapped'. Number four gets trapped in a hole, and captured by the psycho (he's the one hung in a tree and set on fire). Now we just have Amy. And her story is over. 
Carrie stops at the nearest gas station, a newer building, and asks the young man at the counter to use the phone. Calling the police, she is berated for joking around. You see, as anyone watching a number of these probably figured out in the first five minutes, Amy is not alive. She, in fact, died with her friends five years ago. When Carrie looks in her car, Amy is gone. She then sees Jimmy and is frightened but he's there to help. He explains that Amy shows up every year on the night she died (we get to revisit the beginning of the movie and find she didn't make it out after all) trying to 'find peace'. Amy had told Carrie where she hid the map with the bodies' locations and she tells him - also finding in the debris by the station the rusting husk of her husband's car. Now she knows why he never came back. Jimmy explains that when the mine blew in '67, apparently the government had also been dumping nuclear waste there (of course) and the waste went into their water supply, which caused most to die, but the survivors to have deformed children. Like his brother - the psycho in the ski mask, and his cousin, Billy (the man with no arms). He says the killing has to stop so Amy can rest and asks Carrie where the map is. Before she can reveal anything, the psycho shows up and Jimmy shoots him. Oops, no he didn't. He drops dead at Carrie's feet. Behind him is the young man Tobey (An in-joke, as in Tobe Hooper. Yeah, I wasn't amused either.) from the gas station (Remember the little boy at the beginning? No? Don't blame you a bit.) saying he had to kill 'Uncle Jimmy' because he was going to kill Uncle Psycho (forgot the name, sorry), like he killed Uncle Billy. The last scene is Uncle Psycho approaching Carrie with a still bloody machete (From what? Who cares?) and the sound of her screaming.
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