Penance

This film is loosely inspired by the notorious Graeme Stephen Reeves also known as "The Butcher of Bega". He is a former gynecologist and obstetrician charged in relation to alleged sexual and indecent assaults and genital mutilation of all of his female patients.

The film stars Marieh Delfino (from Jeepers Creepers 2) as Amelia. Amelia is a single mother who is trying her best to care for her sick child by taking on a few side jobs of being a exotic dancer. Thanks to her friend Eve played by Alice Amter (Big Bang Theory's Mrs. Koothrappali) she learns the ins and outs of being a stripper and reluctantly follows in her friend's footsteps.

Up until this point of the film, there is LOTS of nudity and lots of shaky cam footage & dialogue.

That being said, we continue following our lead actress as she falls into a dancing gig. This gig leads her and us into a debauched and visceral hellhole, into the arms of a deranged madman played effortlessly by Graham McTavish (from The Hobbit trilogy & RAMBO). Graham brings Graeme Reeves to life in a most disturbing way.

Most of the scenes in the film take place in a what is believed to be a asylum hospital of sorts. This is where the film gets to the meat of it. The claustrophobia that is created alongside the brutality & gritty realism that is seen in the Hospital scenes are ones to make any man or woman cringe. Marieh Delfino does an AMAZING job at making the viewer feel she truly is in danger of her life & fighting to survive. It's quite unsettling in some places to watch.

If you watch the film, you'll know what I am talking about. If you can make it past the 30 minute mark, then you are in for a ride of disturbing proportions.

I'd also like to mention that two cameos of Horror's favorite bad guys are thrown into the mix. Tony Todd and Michael Rooker are placed in the film as Henchmen of the deranged Dr. Reeves.

That being said, this film is combination of both torture porn and found footage horror. The film in itself is really hard to watch in some instances, mainly due to the prolonged build up of the characters and the obvious torture & brutality of the women. It's a film that after watching it you definitely wanna see something else. It's a film that makes the audience feel uncomfortable and dirty. If you enjoy the grittiness of torture inspired HOSTEL-like films then check this out.

This film lures its viewers down into an graphic and disgusting abyss around the role of being a stripper, and attempts to terrify strippers and pre-strippers away from the lifestyle. Shot in documentary style, we are taken into a dark world that crosses between stripper life, trickery, and dark religion.

A redeeming quality of the movie is how it gave the impression that certain risks aren't worth the reward and that desperation can bring us to threatful situations. Certainly not an original plot, but the movie was decent enough for viewership. The acting was alright by a mostly anonymous cast.

Michael Rooker's character should have been predominantly featured as the character hadn't been seen in most of the film. He played his role well of a psycologically disturbed man who twists morality, righteousness, and penance to teach a lesson to the women that chose to sell their body. This movie is also not for the weak at heart and gets very graphic.

All in all, I'll write it off as nothing special. You can give it a look though, but if you have a better film to watch, you should slip that in instead.

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.

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.

Probably best compared to a combination of Saw and the Killing Room. Only simpletons with an attention span disability will call this torture porn. I'm starting to wonder if there's a group of people out there who simply go around labeling stuff torture porn to turn people off from otherwise great films (such as Martyrs).

It does have some nasty scenes, but more is left to the imagination than is shown, so that kills the porn element. There is torture, and largely the film involves a very psychologically disturbed person seeking revenge through torture.

So, psychological torture horror with some gore, yes. A Saw copycat, yes, in some ways. But that's far too simple to capture what's going on here. A very well thought out story.