Penny Dreadful.

Okay look, yes, the last After Dark movie I reviewed did kinda suck. But I did say before their films are pretty hit and miss. Plus, I think bad movies make for better reviews because it gives me way more to talk about. Either way, Penny Dreadful is actually good, SPOILERS!


This is from an After Dark festival several years before The Graves. Once again my research comes back largely empty, so let's just go straight into it!

Hey look, it's Meg from Supernatural and that dude from Hills Have Eyes! Before Meg possessed her, her name was Penny and she was an emokid, a girl scared of cars because of a crash she was in when she was a kid that killed her parents. She is currently in therapy, trying to overcome her fear, and is on a road trip to do so, heading back to where it all began - which ends up turning out almost brutally literal. While arguing over Penny's self medicating, they run over Todd in The Shadows and agree to give him a ride because of what they did. Okay, I didn't realise until I looked up the actress on IMDb that the hitchhiker was a chick... anyway! This makes Penny extremely nervous, but in her defence the hitchhiker is creepy as fuck. As it turns out the shrink is an utter asshole and quickly things begin to fall apart, as the hitchhiker slashes their tires and strands them. The shrink ends up dead and Penny trapped in the car with the corpse. Thus Penny begins to slowly go mad, freeze and starve, eventually leading to the contemplation of suicide, I mean there is only one thing we are really all afraid of, right? Meanwhile outside the hitch hiker goes on a killing spree around her, stealing hope from her at every turn. So you better believe, when they have their final scramble, it's fucking satisfying as hell. Although still left strangely open, but this film loves fucking with you.

If I was going to sum up Penny Dreadful, I'd say it is like the avant-garde of the modern horror genre. I know, I know...wait, wait...shut up a minute and hear me out! Long gone are the days where horror is about scares, these days horror is all about big set piece moments blurring the lines between your average horror and your average blockbuster. Set piece moments entire films were based around in the 80's can be recreated in someone's bedroom on a laptop today, this ease of special effects means any kind of horror with money behind it is just getting bigger and bigger and further and further away from what horror is all about. But if we take avant-garde at its most basic meaning, 'a middle finger to the mainstream' - Penny Dreadful embodies that notion perfectly. It's a complete reversal of the modern horror genre, scaring you is the only thing it cares about and everything else is stripped away to make it as scary as possible. It spends all its time setting the scene, what actually plays out is an afterthought. This is a bare bones piece, so much so it barely counts as a film - nothing really happens! But all effort has gone into building a terrifying atmosphere meaning it succeeds as a horror film for the same reasons it fails as a film in general.

Penny Dreadful uses a pretty unique scare tactic for modern horror and that is in the form of trying to make you scare yourself. It's all in the atmosphere, in the unknown, remember what I was talking about in the last review? Yeah, that. It wants you to relate and share the experiences of the main characters, remember how it felt and use your own memories to scare you. There isn't shit jumping out at you or whatever else, it doesn't need this. The only downside of this is it causes the film to really feel like it's dragging, there isn't much in the way of plot or even action, it's just a big mood piece. Penny Dreadful is closer to a serious drama or a thriller than it is a horror film. It's just so fucking tense. And it's really fucking scary, so I guess it pays off.

Penny Dreadful even comes with that Avant-Garde frustration and shock. Penny is human, real life human which when compared to movie humans, makes her completely useless. You feel inclined in a lot of scenes to scream pansy at the screen, but then you remember this is exactly how you'd be in this situation and then your stomach drops and twists slightly when you realise this completely innocent, vulnerable little girl is being utterly tormented by a truly evil sonofabitch with seemingly no motivations other than being an utter cunt and your heart just shatters for her, you just wanted to jump into the screen and help her, and trust me, the movie is a fucking bastard with it too, snatching triumph from Penny right at the second of realisation over and over again, wanting you to scream at the film, 'let the bastard girl win!'.

Are we sure this is an After Dark film? It's actually really well staged, it shows off some good direction and some good cinematography. The flashback to the car crash is actually heartbreaking, Jesus. Plus the film is just in general really stylish and well edited, a cool movie however despite all this, overall the film really isn't very filmic - I mean sure, it does things with the medium you couldn't do in say a play or novel, but behind all the flash is a really quite static film. There is also something really...odd with it too, although it is shot and directed well, there is just something about it that looks so old. I'd have never thought this came out in 2006, late nineties at the latest. I mean sure there are mobile phones and so what, but there is just this grainy fuzziness to it that a lot of early 90's movies had and it isn't just in the quality of the film, it's the way everything looks in general.

Rachel Miner puts on a great performance and thank God for that, due to the diminished sense of scale she spends long scenes entirely on her own. I'm used to her playing Meg all the time (I mean did you see her in Terriers? It was just Meg again!) but here she is vulnerable and frightened, this is clearly a much harder role to play and she nails it. And also lucky for us, the Hitchhiker is less of a character and more of a threat for a majority of the film, because when Liz Davies actually gets to act and say her lines...a lot of that fear starts to dissipate.

Pacingwise, the film feels really off. I don't know, it never feels like it has a sense of direction, like it never really knows where it is going. Penny is sat waiting for something to happen and so are we. It always just feels like one random set piece moment stuck to another, as they desperately try and pad the film with...something. You could argue that is the intention but it just feels like the film is being made up as they film it. Just lots of scenes of Penny getting really frightened. I mean the shrinks death would seemingly propel the narrative but it just seems to slow it down further. Like I don't know, maybe I'd appreciate this more if I'd picked up a weird hitchhiker, but I just struggled with this...whenever I looked past that great, terrifying atmosphere I kept realising there was nothing else, which in turn makes it a pretty terrible film.

So do I recommend it? I'd honestly say that Penny Dreadful is the first horror film in a very long while which is exclusively for horror fans. Thanks to the fantastical, escapist world of magic and monsters that is the modern horror genre, I find myself recommending it more to friends of mainstream cinema than I ever am to my friends who like being scared. And as stated this is the complete reversal of that, Penny Dreadful is fucking terrifying and utterly heartbreaking, anyone who likes being scared will love this...everyone else though... Penny Dreadful is what I assume to be about a ten page script stretched over an hour and a half and so as such, nothing ever really happens, so you'll probably just be bored and frustrated with the thing. And one look on the IMDb message boards prove that, people hated this film. This is like a film from another time. They hated how frustrating it was, the open ending...the lack of things happening, this modern generation can't appreciate anything unless it's loud, full of explosions and constantly screaming in your face. Don't be one of those cunts, watch this movie.

Think About It!

-Locke