Penny…
Main Cast: Rachel Miner, Mimi Rogers
Director: Richard Brandes
Each year there are movies produced that are never seen by the public. Their content is considered too graphic, too disturbing, too shocking for general audiences. This is one of those films.
As a little girl, Penny Dearborn (Rachel Miner, BULLY) lost her family in a horrible car accident. Now, years later, Penny wants to finally put her lifelong fear of cars behind her. With the help of her therapist, Orianna Volkes (Mimi Rogers, AUSTIN POWERS: INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY), she gets into a car and together they drive back to the mountains where the original crash occurred.
Penny is, understandably, nervous, and has been self-medicating throughout the journey. When Orianna finds out, she takes her focus off the road just long enough to chastise Penny for not facing her fear and taking her recovery seriously, just long enough to not see the hitchhiker on the side of the road until it’s too late.
The car screeches to a halt and, hoping to make up for running the poor man down, Orianna offers him a ride to his destination, a closed campground just up the road.
This hitchhiker is one creepy dude, never saying a word, offering the women a chunk of meat he’s got hanging off a skewer he pulls from his coat. They finally reach the campground, let the guy out, and hightail it back the way they came. Penny almost gets sick from the anxiety and Orianna pulls over to let her get some air. That’s when they discover the metal skewer sticking out of the right front tire. Orianna pulls it out, then says they have to get back to the highway before the tire goes completely flat, but the car doesn’t make it and Orianna takes off into the woods, looking for a cell signal to call for a tow.
Time for Penny’s terror to set in.
PENNY DREADFUL is a pretty intense, creepy movie. There is no shortage of films just like it, with the lone hero in a small, isolated location, with terror that stems from the fear of dying alone in an unfamiliar place. The original SAW played very well with this idea to a degree, but in the case of PENNY DREADFUL we’re not treated to five sequels that build on an already convoluted mythology. For this movie, one entry is enough, anything else would just ruin it and, in my opinion, PENNY DREADFUL is too cool to want to ruin.
Written by Richard Brandes (MARTIAL LAW 1 & 2) and Diane Doniol-Valcroze (KILL BY INCHES), PENNY DREADFUL has a lot of the same ideas I’ve always thought I would love to include in a horror novel of my own. I love single location stories and I love that sense of entrapment that comes with them. I think the struggle of a main character to survive in a situation like that is so much more interesting than one in which the hero has loads and loads of resources and one-liners.
Rachel Miner is spot-on perfect as Penny. I’ve seen her before in other roles, but this was the first time I’d ever seen even a hint of vulnerability from her, and it suits her well. She should take more roles like this where she’s able to really play a victim and then begin to develop a sense of self and inner strength. Not for nothing, but THIS is who should have been Laurie Strode in the Rob Zombie HALLOWEEN remake. Miner would have killed that role.
Liz Davies (PET SEMATARY) plays the hitchhiker who, although referred to as “he” throughout the movie, is obviously not. The movie stays away from the gender issue by never giving the hitchhiker a name (even during a news report of an escaped mental patient, the broadcast is turned off before a name is given) nor a backstory. I see this as a minor flaw. I don’t think the hitchhiker in this case was given enough to be presented as a real menace, one I myself would dread. Other than taunting Penny once toward the end, the hitchhiker is never more than a coat and a big hood. If I’m supposed to be afraid of someone, I want to know WHO I’m in fear of. Even Jason Vorhees had a history.
Joplin Wu was cinematographer on the movie. I’ve never seen any of his other work (PUMP, OPEN RETURN, THE SURPRISE PARTY), but PENNY DREADFUL is a pretty movie to watch, with lots of aerial shots that remind us how small this setting is in contrast to the expansive area around it.
It’s got to be a difficult task, pulling off a 92-minute movie that takes place almost entirely inside a car and there are a few times I found my attention wandering, but it was always Miner that brought me back. To break up the monotony, and add more to the body count, there’s a junkyard not far from where Penny is stranded, and everyone there winds up dead, which, for me, only cheapened what was becoming an incredibly good movie.
But I’m able to overlook these minor tidbits because, at the end of the day, Rachel Miner kept me watching for an hour and a half while she sat in a car and freaked out. So few actors have the presence to carry a movie by themselves, and if asked to name them, Rachel Miner wouldn’t have been anywhere on my list.
The script is passable for the most part, the production design is okay, but what really shines in PENNY DREADFUL is the situation and Rachel Miner. The rest is just a movie. Is it scary? Not really. The situation is creepy, Miner’s portrayal is intense, these things are good, but PENNY DREADFUL works on a level apart from most movies labeled “horror”. Truth be told, if you can overlook the blood and the body count, PENNY DREADFUL works better as a “thriller” than a horror movie, and, take out those extraneous characters, and that’s what you’d be left with. I wish that would have been the route they took, but alas it wasn’t to be. Still, good stuff either way.
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C. Dennis Moore is the author of over 60 published short stories and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. Most recent appearances are in the Dark Highlands 2, What Fears Become, Dead Bait 3 and Dark Highways anthologies. His novels are Revelations, and the Angel Hill stories, The Man in the Window, The Third Floor, and The Flip.
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