When I was growing up, there was a kid I always dreaded being around. He wasn’t violent or dangerous, but he made me deeply uncomfortable. He ate his own boogers, farted without the slightest embarrassment and usually had dried snot covering his sleeves. He could also say surprisingly mean things for no apparent reason. Whenever I knew he was going to be somewhere, I immediately started thinking about how I could avoid him.
Looking back as an adult, I understand that there were probably things going on with him that I was too young to recognize. At the time, though, I didn’t have that perspective. To me, he was simply the weird kid whose presence could change the entire mood of an afternoon. Most of us have probably known someone who created that kind of dread without ever actually threatening us.
Penny Lane Is Dead shows how quickly discomfort around one unwelcome person can infect an entire gathering, leading to one hell of a night.
Set during an Australian summer in 1986, Penny Lane Is Dead follows Penny Lane (Bailey Spalding) as she celebrates being accepted into college with her longtime best friends at her family’s remote beach house. The gathering is supposed to be a final night together before adulthood begins pulling them in different directions, but tensions already exist beneath the surface.
Penny and the more confident Toni (Tahlee Fereday) have recently begun a romantic relationship they are keeping private, while the sensitive and socially awkward Amy (Alexandra Jensen) remains unaware that the friendship among the three girls is beginning to change. Their celebration becomes considerably more uncomfortable when Penny’s troubled cousin, Kat (Sophia Wright-Mendelsohn), unexpectedly joins them.
Kat’s abrasive personality and history of bad decisions immediately disrupt the night, and her attempt at a cruel prank sets off a chain of increasingly dangerous events.
When several threatening men, led by Angus (Ben O’Toole), also arrive at the beach house, what began as a celebration rapidly descends into a fight for survival. Trapped in an isolated location with few places to turn for help, Penny and her friends are forced to confront the intruders on their own.
One of the film’s greatest strengths is its female leads, particularly Tahlee Fereday and Sophia Wright-Mendelsohn. Fereday’s Toni is thrust into the role of protector, forcing her to do everything she can to save her friends as the night becomes increasingly violent. Toni may be terrified, but her loyalty and determination keep pushing her forward even when the situation appears hopeless.
Wright-Mendelsohn’s Kat sits at the complete opposite end of the spectrum. She is unpredictable, completely unhinged and capable of making an already dangerous situation even worse. Toni draws her strength from her desire to protect the people she loves, while Kat uses hers to intimidate and manipulate everyone around her. Both women are formidable in very different ways, and watching these total opposites become adversaries gives the film some of its strongest and most intense moments.
There is a tremendous amount of blood and violence in the film, but none of it feels forced into the scenes simply to shock the audience. Every blow has weight, whether it comes from the impact of a shovel to a skull, a cheese grater dragged across skin, or a bullet tearing into a body. The violence is brutal, but it always has a purpose.
The kills are also quick rather than unnecessarily long and drawn out, bringing a disturbing sense of realism to every encounter. There are no elaborate speeches or convenient pauses that allow the characters time to escape. Just as in real life, someone who intends to kill you probably isn’t going to stop and explain everything first. They are simply going to do it, and that unpredictability gives nearly every violent moment in Penny Lane Is Dead a genuine sense of dread.
Beyond those strengths, the movie has some glaring problems. It is labeled as a dark comedy, but either I am completely out of touch with dark comedy, or the jokes simply aren’t funny. Some of the situations may be twisted or absurd, but they never brought so much as a chuckle out of me. A movie this bleak does not necessarily need constant laughs, but if it is going to be sold as a comedy, I expect at least some of the humor to land.
Kat also becomes almost cartoonishly evil. When Angus and his crew arrive, she goes from mildly odd and abrasive to completely unhinged. Kat and Angus begin to resemble Baby and Otis from the Firefly saga, only without enough development to make that transformation feel believable. Their behavior certainly gives the movie a darker and more dangerous edge, but Kat’s sudden shift is so jarring that it feels less like a natural escalation and more like the character changing because the story needs her to become a villain.
The ending left me with even more questions. By that point, the survivors have been beaten, stabbed and subjected to all manner of catastrophic injuries, yet they are eventually able to behave as though they can simply laugh off everything they have endured. Those injuries seem to have little effect on their ability to move around or complete physically demanding tasks.
That may be easy to overlook in a deliberately exaggerated slasher, but Penny Lane Is Dead presents much of its violence as painful and potentially life-ending. The characters should at least struggle to function after everything the film puts them through.
I give Penny Lane Is Dead three out of five stars.
Tahlee Fereday and Sophia Wright-Mendelsohn make compelling adversaries, and the sudden, impactful violence gives the movie a genuine sense of danger. Unfortunately, the dark comedy never made me laugh, Kat’s transformation into a cartoonishly evil villain feels too abrupt, and the characters’ ability to shrug off catastrophic injuries weakens the realism established by the film’s brutality.
There is enough blood, tension and strong acting to make the movie worth watching, but its uneven tone and questionable ending keep it from reaching its full potential. Penny Lane Is Dead may leave a bloody impression, but it does not quite make a killing.