August Underground's Penance

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]

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.

I'm a big fan of shock and gore films,but this heap of crap wasn't worth the power it took to run my laptop as I watched it...for FREE THANK GOODNESS! It's the same 'ol hash in a different package. If you've seen ONE August Underground "movie" (and I use the word movie LOOSELY) then you've seen them all pretty much. The ONLY redeeming quality of these "movies" is that the gore looks pretty real. Actually better than some HIGH BUDGET films. Aside from that...this "movie" has absolutely nothing new to offer you. Go do a search for "shockumentaries"and you will find much MUCH better films to satisfy your shock and gore needs. I WISH I had my time back with this pile of garbage. Toodles.

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.

After the somewhat disappointing 'August Underground's Mordum', which often went beyond believability in an attempt to do outdo its predecessor, the team at ToeTag have delivered what must be one of the most nauseating, realistically disgusting and vile pieces of filth that I have ever witnessed. The film is an 84 minute catalogue of extreme depravity, sexual violence, torture and dismemberment, and hardly a minute went by where I didn't feel revulsed by what I was watching (and more than just a little bit sordid). But, of course, director Fred Vogel doesn't want viewers to enjoy Penance; he wants them to endure it, which means that the third and final movie in the August Underground series can only be hailed as a success!

The aim of Penance is to make damn sure that anyone watching it sees murder as it truly is: an ugly act that is nasty, messy and totally repugnant. Viewers are made to feel sickened by what they witness. Vogel's on-screen killers, a couple of psychos (played by the director himself and Mordum's Cristie Whiles) who enjoy nothing more than inflicting pain and suffering on complete strangers, are neither glamourised or exaggerated, nor are they portrayed as anti-heroes; they're shown to be real people—albeit bloody scary ones who would be perfectly happy to remove your head from your shoulders without giving it a second thought.

Once again, the film consists of random video footage shot by the twisted twosome as they go about their day-to-day business, attacking the homeless, going to rock gigs, indulging in drugs and, of course, raping and killing innocent people. This time, however, the quality is not that of a degraded VHS tape (as in the previous two AU films), but digital (and in widescreen), meaning that the viewer gets to see every last sickening detail.

And what sights they have to show us: Vogel's character wrestles with entrails whilst trying to disembowel a corpse, removes a foetus from a pregnant victim, and (unsuccessfully) tries to rape a woman after having smashed her husband over the head with a hammer; Whiles's soulless bitch slowly squeezes the life out of a child, gleefully hacks up a deer (which is later fed to the scariest lion in existence), and also indulges in her fair share of vicious torture and bloody dismemberment. Every last second of each hideous act is unflinchingly captured by the roving camera, and watching without wincing is not an easy trick. The gruesome effects are top notch and praise must be given to effects man Jerami Cruise for successfully turning my (usually cast-iron) stomach several times.

With the OTT approach of the second film replaced by the more realistic feel of the first, Penance is a satisfactory end to a unique and very unsettling series of films. I now hope that Vogel leaves the 'pseudo-snuff' genre well alone and turns his attention to making the zombie film that he has mentioned in the past.

As with the other AU movies, I find it a hard film to rate. It's not 'enjoyable', and at times it plods (the first twenty minutes are pretty uneventful), but it's a powerful work that you just cannot ignore, and for that reason Penance gets 7.5 out of 10 (rounded up to 8 for IMDb).