Penance - Der Folter Keller

When I stumbled upon the 2009 thriller "Penance" from writer and director Jake Kennedy, I opted to sit down to watch it because it was a movie that I hadn't already seen nor heard about, plus there were some interesting names on the cast list.

However, the reality of the thing that was "Penance" was far from entertaining. The storyline and script was a scambled and incohesive dumpsterfire, and with each passing minute it got more and more difficult to suffer through the ordeal. And I ended up giving up on "Penance" 55 minutes into the torment. At that point it was just clear that the movie's script and storyline wasn't going to improve. So I tossed the towel into the ring and gave up out of sheer and utter boredom and disinterest in the movie.

So writer and director Jake Kennedy most certainly failed to entertain me with this 2009 thriller. And I use the word 'thriller' here very loosely, because the movie wasn't much of anything, aside from a cluttered mess.

I am especially dumbfounded that with names such as Jason Connery, Michael Rooker, Graham McTavish, Lochlyn Munro, Tony Todd and James Duval on the cast list that "Penance" didn't amount to anything at all. Well, I suppose even actors and actresses fire blanks once in a while.

If you enjoy thrillers, then do yourself a favor and don't waste 85 minutes on the ordeal that is "Penance". Some of us suffered through this in lesser or greater length so you don't have to.

And believe you me when I say that I am never returning to watch the remaining 30 minutes of the movie. I just don't simply care about the characters of the mockery that was supposed to resemble a storyline.

My rating of "Penance" lands on a one out of ten stars.

Penance is an example of this decade's "torture porn" craze at its worst. Cheaply made, with largely unknown actors, the film lacks the creativity of films such as Saw, substituting shock tactics for originality.

The story is nothing new. An innocent young woman is forced to become a stripper because of financial trouble, and ends up falling into the hands of a depraved religious fanatic. (I'm a humanist, and even I think this movie gives religion a bad name.) What follows is an hour long wallow in torture and extremely graphic sequences of genital mutilation, both male and female.

What makes the movie particularly disgusting is its implicit acceptance of the moral logic of the villain. The protagonist is a victim of circumstance, not a "bad" stripper like the others, who are depicted in the most stereotypical, degrading way possible. At times, this approach pushes the film into outright misogyny.

Furthermore, Penance relies on a video taping framing device ripped off from better films like REC. The result is a cheap looking digital feature that adds nothing to the overall story.

The only good points of the film are the scenes with Michael Rooker, which unfortunately comprise only ten minutes or so. One wishes the film had been focused on his character instead.

I'm as sick and tired of predictable torture flicks and found footage films as the next horror fan, and so Penance—which 'cleverly' combines these two tired sub-genres to create the 'found torture footage' sub-sub-genre—hardly sounded like it was going to deliver much of interest to this particular jaded viewer.

Indeed, after just a few minutes of wobbly Blair Witch-style nonsense, during which attractive young mother Amelia Wallis (Marieh Delfino) prattles in front of a video camera about her love of Topanga Canyon, her job at a centre for battered women, and her daughter, I was itching to switch off. But what I had forgotten about was the power of a fit bird in the raw to make almost anything worthwhile...

As part of her audition tape for a TV game-show, the usually reserved Amelia agrees to help her stripper pal Suzie (Eve Mauro) entertain a group of stags at a party; let's just say that this girl was built to strip! From that moment on, Penance becomes pure trash entertainment: after Suzie is given a black eye by a customer, Amelia reluctantly stands in for her friend on a highly paid job for a special client, a decision that results in the poor girl's incarceration at a disused asylum where she is subjected to torture by Geeves, a religious zealot who has dedicated his life to purifying the souls of strippers. Cue lots of gratuitous nudity, pointless cameos from horror icons, dumb plot development, vaginal mutilation, self-castration, and more nudity.

Penance's use of the found footage gimmick is totally implausible, the story painfully dumb, the supposedly tense action absolutely laughable, and the violence disappointing (although nasty in concept, the gore is not that graphic), but Marieh Delfino kept me entertained throughout, albeit on the most basic of levels. In fact, it makes me wonder if I would have enjoyed The Blair Witch Project more if Heather Donahue had only thrown caution to the wind and flipped out her norks....

This movie strikes me on so many levels as absolute trash. I wish the lead actress was at least attractive. Although, she did have nice breasts... which was the only redeeming quality of this flick, gratuitous nudity. Especially in the case of one Eve Mauro. That girl is absolutely gorgeous. Smokin' hot! I think I would probably watch anything with her in it, at least once. But alas, I digress from my original reason for writing this.

"Candyman", "Dead Man on Campus", "Warlock" and Brandi Svennings dad all in one movie? They obviously did not invest wisely of their spoils from their actual roles in real movies... That, or the director/writer/producer caught and filmed them all in some suck-off man orgy together and blackmailed them into making this horrible movie.

Actually a documentary on fecal matter would probably be more entertaining than this movie is...

If you're a guy and thinking about watching this movie, punch yourself in the balls... really hard. That pain is as enjoyable as this movie is going to be for you. If you're a girl, rinse your eyes with vodka. Same goes...

I will never understand how something as bad as this gets made. Along the line, people kept giving this the green light. HOW? The actors and actresses agreed to be in it. WHY? Distributors agreed to release it. Again I ask, in F's-name WHY? The economy is steadily slipping, but it seems the movie industry will throw copious amounts of cash to whatever idiot comes along. (I bet the screenplay was written in crayon.) I think "Clerks" cost a little over fifty grand to make. No actors, no sets and lastly, no color. Taking all of that into account, this movie at the very least, probably cost a cool quarter mil. WTF?!?! Are you serious?!?! In this day and age, Jake Whatever-his-name-is should be lynched for wasting that much money. Like rappers and athletes buying gold and platinum jewelry/teeth/wheels... but that's a whole other rant...

I give it two stars. One for each of Eve Mauro's wonderful breasts. Nothing else.

What a shame that a wonderful cast full of decent character actors and genre stalwarts is wasted in a nasty little 'torture porn' style movie. The tale of a couple of strippers who are abducted by some crazy characters who plan to punish and perform cruel surgery on them is an awful one, let down by overwrought acting, dodgy execution, and unpleasant gore effects.

The only reason I watched this was for all the familiar faces. Genre mainstays like Lochlyn Munro, James Duval, and Jason Connery all have minor parts. The main villain is played by Graham McTavish, a personal favourite of mine purely because of his wonderful character in RAMBO, and he's good here too, although he has little to work with. We also get a brief Tony Todd cameo, and a nicely sleazy turn for Michael Rooker. It's just a pity with all the talent involved that they couldn't come up with something better than this 'torture porn' dreck.