Devil\'s Playground, a Documentary About

Devil's Playground, a documentary about the rumspringa, uses highly effective imagery paired with long-term case studies to create a dramatic view of this period in Amish life. The movie uses recurring visual images to communicate its message, in addition to interviews with Amish individuals of all ages and experiences. While the movie is incredibly visually powerful, it ends anticlimactically, with unresolved situations for nearly all of the individuals interviewed. The creator's choice of interview subjects is both a strong and weak point, as the interviews are compelling, but ultimately unfinished at the end of the film. The Devil's Playground effectively communicates it's message using strong visual images and powerful interviews, but is weak in its lack of clear conclusions.

The visual images used in The Devil's Playground have dramatic impact, particularly as they underscore voice-overs by individual interviewees. One of the most powerful and recurring images is that of cigarette smoking. Almost every young person on rumspringa is shown smoking, and most of them are shown smoking during all of their interviews. The filmmakers used smoking as a way to demonstrate the negative behaviors engaged in by those on rumspringa. Cigarettes illustrate that many of young people make unwise and harmful choices. This enables the filmmaker to demonstrate the total freedom of the young people without resorting to overtly telling the viewer. It is a highly effective communication tool, and a strength of the film.

The use of interviews as the dominant method of story telling is also highly effective. Such interviews allow the filmmakers to communicate using the words of the Amish or former Amish directly. This makes the film more effective because one feels as though one is getting information straight from the source, rather than being exposed to words that have been mediated through a third party. The interviews appear to be unscripted, further emphasizing the authentic nature of the dialog. The filmmakers do not give themselves an audible voice, which implies that the voice that should be heard is that of the people giving the interviews. The filmmaker's choice in remaining silent and letting the Amish individuals tell their own story is an effective communication tool, which succeeds in engaging the viewers interest.

Despite these two strengths, however, the film does have weaknesses. The most dominant one is the lack of resolution.. While failing to conclude the stories of the individuals interviewed could be interpreted as implying that life never resolves neatly, it also left the viewer feeling unsatisfied with the film. The film seemed to trail off, rather than resolve. The viewer has no way of finding out what happened to the characters after the end of the film, which is highly frustrating after becoming invested in their lives over the course of the movie. This detracted from the film because it caused the viewer to come away without a sense of conclusion, and thus leave the one unsatisfied.