Stylish but barely mediocre overall

Film Perfection

The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

I consider myself a horror fan, and to be honest, the most horrific thing about this film are the ratings and reviews given by some other very enthusiastic viewers here. To me, it was dreadfully long, and dreadfully incoherent.Consider this example scenario, which gives you an idea of the yawn-inducing pace this film has:Girl in car in dark woods at night, with the body of a murdered psychologist in the backseat, herself cuddled up in the driver's seat, can't get out, crazy murderer's been doing stuff around the car to freak her out.Suddenly, a car horn is heard (other people are making out in another car nearby):*Honk*Girl's thoughts as communicated through facial expressions, "What's that?"*Honk, honk*"Was that a horn?"*Honk, honk, honk*"Better get up!"*Honk, honk*"No wait, I think I heard something!"*Hooonk*"Was that a horn?"*Honk, honk*"Oh my God, a car?!?"*Honk, honk, honk*"I think I better get up"*Honk, honk*Gets up, "Maybe there's someone else in the forest?"*Hoooonk*"What WAS that?"*Honk, honk*"Is that a car?"*Honk, honk*"What's that?"*Hoooonk*"Oh my God, I'm so scared!"*Honk, honk, honk*"Is that a car?"*Honk, honk*"What was THAT?!"Every scene in this empty, empty movie goes on and on like this with inane and mind-numbing repetitiveness. The main character, Penny, is constantly crying or sobbing and completely incapable of doing anything on her own. The character build-up is only exactly enough to support the extremely simple storyline, providing absolutely no insight to the inner workings of any of the characters, except perhaps that by the end of the movie we know that the murderer likes meat on a stick and Penny likes apples. To be honest, if it weren't for the name of the movie, I'd have no clue what the name of the main character was. There's only just about enough story material in this movie to sustain the music video for your typical, two-and-a-half minute Beatles track.To illustrate the incoherence and sloppiness in script writing, consider this stupendously dumb scene, in which a guy actually stumbles upon Penny inside the car stuck between two trees. He flashes a light inside the car, on Penny and the dead psychologist, now in the backseat, and Penny begs for his help in getting her out and escape the attacker that killed "Orianna", the psychologist in the backseat.The easily-could-be savior walks around in front of the car, flashing his light here and there, scratching his head, before returning to the side window stating that he can't help, the car's stuck, he'll need to get some help.Now, as admirable and important as being a law-abiding citizen may be, I think we would all agree that no judge would send a guy to jail for picking up a stone from the ground and bashing in a window on an old BMW to save a girl from a psychopath killer who's already done away with a lady in the backseat. But maybe the "savior" is simply retarded or deaf.In either case, when Penny responds to his surprising statement with, "No, please don't, he's gonna kill me!", the dumbfounded guy startled gasps, "What!? Who?". Well, my dear friend, perhaps the same guy that she told you about just 20 seconds ago, the guy who left the corpse that you examined with your flashlight — the lady in the back, remember? You know, she said, "Please, please, he's out there somewhere, you have to help me", and then you said, "Wh-who? Who's out here?", then she said, "The attacker, he killed Orianna", and then you turned around, startled, making sure he was not behind you. Remember that? Maybe that's the guy she's talking about now, 20 seconds later.The wonderful charisma of Mimi Rogers and the impressive acting of an ever- sobbing Rachel Miner, considering the terrible wreck of a script, are the only positive things about this marvelously crappy 1-and-a-half hour time stealer.

I was going to give a synopsis of the movie but I couldn't write one without giving away spoilers. So I gave up on that part. I'm just going to write the things I didn't like about this flick: 1. The chick who played Penny Dreadful was annoying beyond belief. Some people were saying she's gorgeous and a great actress. No, no, no, no, no. Don't believe that for a second. Great actress? Her whole job was to pretend to be super terrified throughout the entire movie. How hard is that? Gorgeous? She has a super huge head. Her head is waaaaaay too big for her body. She's like a freaking bobblehead doll.2. Mimi Rogers plays Penny's therapist. Mimi is taking Penny to this secluded place hours from civilization so Penny can get over her fear of cars. Why does it need to be out in the middle of nowhere? Why can't it be at some sort of psychological institute near people? 3. Along the way they hit this creepy hitchhiker and decide to give him a lift. Why? If I had hit the hitchhiker, I wouldn't even bother to get out of my car. I would roll down my window part of the way and ask, "Are you okay?" After the hitcher had said they were okay, I would hit the accelerator and speed off. I don't care if I get a ticket for hit and run, I am not picking up that creep.4. Penny is really aggravating. I was watching this on my laptop and I counted ten times when she annoyed me so much I wanted to throw my laptop out the window. Her therapist must be getting paid thousands of dollars to stay with her at some secluded place for days on end.5. As with most horror movies made within the last 20 years, there are random characters and subplots thrown in that don't enhance the main plot whatsoever. The only reason these characters are thrown in is to increase the body count. And because the director is unable to make an engrossing movie with suspense alone. So he has to resort to the amateurish tactic of increasing the body count in order to distract the audience.The only thing I liked about this movie was the cinematography. Two main things caused me to dislike the movie: Penny aggravated me to no end. And the unnecessary way the director put in extra characters to increase the body count.

This is a good horror movie with good acting but the premise of the whole movie is absurd. Who in their right mind would pick up a stranger in the middle of the woods when it's dark. Even if I hit someone in the woods at night, I would not offer him / her a ride, especially since I can't their face and they don't talk. If this wasn't part of the storyline, I'd give this movie a higher rating...note sure why they wrote that into the script...writers must've scored some bad weed that night.From the way they ended the movie, it seems there may be a part two. Unless they get some good weed and write something good, I hope they don't.

If you make a film with the word 'dreadful' in the title, and your film is dreadful, you've really got to expect that a lot of the reviews for the film will express that very adjective; and I really cant think of a better way to describe 'Penny Dreadful' than the second word of its title. I'm all for horror films that try to be original and don't follow an obvious and often done plot line. As a result, a film about someone with a phobia of cars actually sounded promising; but unfortunately the director has opted to pepper the film with clichés, which cancels out any originality. The plot focuses on two women travelling through America in a car. One of them is Penny Deerborn; a young girl who suffers from the fear or cars, and the other is Orianna Volkes - her psychologist. Rather than simply prescribe a bike, Orianna decides that the best medicine for someone who is afraid of cars is to travel many miles to the place where her mother died, in a car. Brilliant! Naturally this pea-brained scheme goes wrong, and young Penny ends up in a nightmarish situation.The majority of this film involves the young girl trapped inside the car. The idea of someone being trapped and intensely frightened could easily lead to a good horror movie; but here it just isn't interesting and the result of that is that we simply don't care about anything that is happening in the film. The script doesn't allow either of the central characters to be made interesting and when the bulk of the film relies on one of them in particular; that really is a large problem. Rachel Miner takes the lead role and actually doesn't do too badly with the material she's given, and starring opposite her is Mimi Rogers as the psychologist with the silly plan, who also does OK. The film doesn't have a lot of variety in terms of the locations used; most of it takes place inside a car anyway. The film really just drones on for most of the running time and it all boils down to a stupid ending. Overall, this is really just a missed opportunity as with better handling, Penny Dreadful could at least have been decent. Oh well...just add it to the long list of dull modern horror films instead.