August Underground's Penance

After watching all three August Underground films, you will be questioning yourself whether the directors are disturbed for making such a sadistic series, or are you disturbed for watching all three. The first august underground was dark and disturbing as it mimicked a snuff film so accurately. Mordum, in my opinion, is one of the most brutal films ever made. So, what are we expecting with Penance? Well, Fred Vogel and Cristie Whiles are back as directors and star in the third installment of the series playing the psychopathic killers Peter and Crusty. Penance takes a different approach, yes, there is still vile scenes such as disembowelment and cutting out a fetus from a victim, but we see more from the killers. There are more "breather scenes" in between the torture and murders showing them just goofing around in front of the camera. What is pivotal in this film is that it digs deep into Peter and Crusty's mental state. Over the series, we have seen Peter, a big strapping lad perform such barbaric acts that he is now reduced to gagging, not being able to perform and abusing substances heavily. On the other hand, we have seen Crusty drop her punk goth image and her twisted enjoyment of brutally torturing and murdering women, to become highly emotional and realizing how vile she has become. It was going to be very hard to top the horrendous depravities that occurred in Mordum, but somehow Vogel and Whiles managed again to have us reaching for the sick bucket. For a film that had a very low budget and unknown actors, it pulled off something so spectacularly disgusting that the series will be implanted in our memory for a long time.

In 2007's "August Underground's Penance" we are introduced to a young couple of serial killers that torture and kill innocent people. This is the third movie in the franchise and with the other two being absolutely terrible and disturbing I wasn't expecting anything else here. And obviously that's exactly what I got. This movie differentiates a little because in the beginning the movie feels a little tamer then it's predecessors. But about halfway through the movie gets off the rails and continues exactly where the other movies left. It's a sick and disturbing found footage horror movie that basically does not entertain at all. The gore is pretty good but that's about it. One movie of this kind was more than enough but this unnecessary franchise has thankfully stopped by now. [2,8/10]

There aren't many films that have turned me away completely. AU Penance was a first for me. I have never had to take a break from a film before or after this one. The August Underground films each have their "breath of fresh air" scenes in between - or even during - the more disturbing blood/vomit drenched scenes. Penance was different. Where it seems most people think that Mordum was the most disturbing in the trilogy, Penance went to a completely different level of grit and darkness. The breaths that this film took weren't enough to have strong enough laugh at to set you at ease or even kind of take you out of the disgust that was taking place. At one point, I had to stop the film and spend half an hour away from it to relax before I could finish. As the credits rolled, I sat in silence just staring at the screen unsure of how exactly I should feel. Easily the most difficult film to sit through, and easily one of my favorite films because of it. Fred Vogel and his team did an incredible job.

"August Underground's Penance" is basically the personal home video of two sociopathic killers on murder spree.Again two nameless butchers played by Fred Vogel and Cristie Whiles videotape their bloodthirsty madness,but "Penance" shows also their slow decline.First of all I'm not a big fan of "August Underground" series.Still as a lover of extreme cinema who had previously seen "August Underground" and "August Underground's Mordum" I really wanted to see the final installment.This time the faux-VHS look of Mordum has been tossed aside in favor of a more contemporary digital look.The gore effects made by ToeTag crew are very convincing and the violence is dirty and vile.There are some boring moments,but overall "Penance" is not as perverted and repulsive as "Mordum".7 out of 10.

August Underground: Penance both sequentially and quality wise comes in third within the faux snuff video series (and I say series not trilogy simply because I know it in my gut that another one will follow in the future most likely out of necessity.) The digital video is clear this go around as opposed to the previous entries which sought to recreate the degraded bootleg VHS aesthetic. In all reality, the budget wasn't there for even average quality digital video hence the artistic reasoning behind the video's look. Reading previous reviews inspired my need to clarify some points. First, TTP has a loyal following who attempt to spread the sickness as it were, but the rest of the civilized world isn't buying the mantra or the videos for that matter. These non-conforming conformists worship at the altar of Vogel and his crew therefore the reviews are incredibly skewed as such.

I bought the previous two videos and each one brought something new to the table. The first seven minutes of August Underground seemed interminable for all of the right reasons as any good horror video should feel. August Underground: Mordum brought the gory excess to a new level, but its major drawback was the excessive rantings and ravings of its participants. Participants rather than actors, because in the scenes that required emoting you can easily tell the limits of such were very small as opposed to the moral ones which were non existent, in all actuality. Penance suffers greatly from this huge shortcoming since it is essentially a two character study of derangement.

Another glaring weakness of Penance is the insistence to continue the home video footage look rather than a cohesive narrative structure with steadicam shots. Penance gives the viewer headaches not only visually but also conceptually. You would think the depravities shown in the third and final video in a faux snuff series would be taken to Mephistophilian levels unseen before within the gorenography genre, but this is just not the case here. Real animal death and dismemberment? Done to incredibly superior effect in "Cannibal Holocuast." Child murder? This was done even better within its own series in Mordum. Fetal death? This centerpiece of shock was undermined by the utter lack imagination within the scene. There was no build up to the moment. The camera did not follow the mother around a store as she shopped for her baby. It didn't portray her absolute joy about this time in her life nor did it display her horror during her final moments as she realized the impending end to both her own and her unborn child's life. It seems Vogel and company simply ran out of ideas which is shocking considering the repugnant reputation we are dealing with.

The whole supposed finale has the feel of a quick dash for cash rather than a true artistic conclusion about the faux snuff phenomena the series explored. Perhaps in this way it truly is a throwback to the exploitation films of yore.