Penny Dreadful

Penny Dreadful is not a great horror film, I've seen better. But what it is is an amazingly brilliant psychological thriller , Penny dreadful is a well made and well acted horror film that will satisfy any horror lovers urge for a good time. After surviving a horrible automobile accident that killed both her parents Penny Dearborn has an unstable and perpetual fear of cars, her therapists suggest that they confront her fear head on. So they take a road trip to cure Penny's fear, but it has dangerous and disastrous results when they pick up a psychotic hitchhiker. Penny Dreadful is a dark and gritty psychological thriller that takes you into the mind and soul of a frightened and traumatized young girl and her fight to say alive. This film explore three main themes, 1. terror and what it can do to you if you let it control you. 2: What certain events in your life can do to change who you are and what you are. 3: What the darkness of a quiet woods can do to turn your worst fears into a reality. Penny Dreadful is a psychological thriller that is right up there with the best and will continue to shock and scare you for a long time to come.

PD misses a lot of opportunities to scare or even freak you out. It has a great set-up, a devilishly simple set (mostly one car) and a bad guy who likes people-ka-bobs... so the scares are a sure thing...right? Nope. Unfortunately for the stellar cast, the movie makes every necessary effort to ruin surprises, cut to the wrong camera shot at the climactic moment, and follow every scary movie cliché there is. We have the "anybody there" moments, the "is that you" line every time the character speaks, the lovers doing it in the back and the great supporting cast that has no use but to fill body bags. Horror for horror sake is a good thing, but this film doesn't capitalize on its confined claustrophobic space, nor does it keep the tension that it could have. Camera shots are cool, but over used and usually not in the right spaces. Even the final scary sequence fails to deliver, ending mid-scene as if the writer forgot to finish it. There is no bang. Mimi Rogers is wasted, as is most of the cast. The main character Penny does a good job, reacts wonderfully... even when there is nothing scary even going on. Without any offense to the actors, or movies in which are set in one location (I love those) this movie is not worth the full price. I saw it to support the Horror fest national film festival... a suggestion for next year... how about a group rate (all 8 movies for one admission?).

Penny Deerborn (Rachel Miner) and her therapist, Orianna Volkes (Mimi Rogers) take a trip to help Penny overcome her fear of cars. But as with any horror film, things go wrong and the car they are traveling in ends up becoming a prison for Penny (wedged between two trees). Oh, and there's also a serial killer loose in the woods.

What is going to be the real deal-maker (or breaker) for this film is if the audience can relate to Penny's fear of cars. Roughly an hour of the film has her in the car by herself being scared. Not much of a plot, or much dialog -- just the actress and her expressions of fear. Many viewers will find this intensely boring. I, however, could relate quite well with this (as someone with anxiety, I often experience attacks in cars and can put myself in her shoes -- if I had been Penny, I would have been much less brave).

Rachel Miner deserves full credit for being amazing. I was not really familiar with her before this, though her name was somewhat known. She seems to have a very solid range, if this movie is any example -- she was asked to carry a film all on her own with no characters to talk to. And in my opinion, she did it.

Mimi Rogers (the former Mrs. Tom Cruise) also plays a unique role. As a corpse. I think that deserves some credit, too, as even acting dead must take some skills -- never really moving or breathing on camera. Definitely a new direction for Rogers.

Secondary characters were nice, if for no other reason than to round out the film... and I loved the visuals... the colors of the dark, snowy mountains. I don't know much about cameras, but I like the way the light was filtered to give it this dark, lonely look. Very good move.

I say check this one out. It may not be for you -- it might bore you to tears. So if you think you're one of those, don't watch it late at night when you're about to take a nap. If you have any sort of anxiety or claustrophobia, I think you'll get a lot more out of this one. And as long as everyone just ignores how conveniently coincidental the whole plot is, we'll be fine.

Penny Dreadful is an interesting film. It's simplistic and executed for most of it's 98 minute running time intensely. But it drops the ball so drastically in it last quarter that the film almost falters completely. No doubt the most entertaining of the three it tells the story of a young girl named Penny whom witnessed her parents dying in a car accident. Growing up some years later she has a fear of cars and is taken by her psychiatrist up to the mountains to confront this fear head on at the place it happened. However upon reaching their destination they accidentally hit a grotesque hitchhiker and upon dropping him off are left stranded in the middle of nowhere after he attacks the car. With a blown off tire, no cell phone reception and a busted ankle Penny is left to fend for herself against the homicidal maniac. The concept is simple and scary imagined being entrapped in such a small space and terrorized. People of course come to help and are brutally slain. Some of the suspense sequences work wonderfully well from the camouflaging of the killer, to noises and sounds in the night. Rachael Miner's performance as Penny is multi layered and award worthy. The film has some nice supporting nods to from Mimi Rogers and others. The Direction is decent and promising while the score and cinematography are top notch and quite impressive. The films problems are simple pacing, it gets a little long in places, the killer he should never be aloud to speak and the final act. What seems to be racing towards a crazy finale ends up reaching it boiling point early and never erupts. The finale is weak and predictable and because this is such a simplistic movie it's hard to understand why they couldn't have executed a standard finale with the same intense gusto they had been demonstrating throughout. In the end Penny Dreadful is engaging, entertaining and delightfully creepy but with further tweaking we could've had a horror classic on our hands.

Horror happens always at night, in abandoned places, when no one is around to help, to see, to witness. Horror happens to only a few of us, the ones who are innocent already, the ones who are weak, the ones who are helpless. It seems that evil is a coward-entity, chickens out on places with many people and strong people and real adversaries. Evil is simply afraid, mushy, and has no integrity whatsoever. May that be how it is, Penny Dreadful is a film where this happens exactly by the book. By this I don't mean to put the film down. In the contrary. PD is an awesome story about to helpless women caught in the darkness, alone, and exposed to evil, or en evil entity. I had a great time watching this film and it scared the crap out of me. I love Mimi Rogers and felt the whole cast was doing a great job. I recommend this film to anyone and hopefully it will come out on DVD and I'll get me a copy of it. Go see it, it is scary!