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Writer's pictureJustin Whippo

Penance (2009)

Updated: Jul 13, 2023

My quick rating - 3,3/10. True events? Just popped on Radarr and caught my eye. Seems a woman fills in for a friend as a stripper and instead is held hostage in a found footage style flick. I was surprised when our main character Marieh Delfino gets picked up by a limo driven by Tony Todd so they did throw some money around on this. There is a group of woman that are there to audition for someone and do their routine to be judged, without music. Very odd watching the girls strip with no sound for some reason along with the casting for this apparently included "must have small breasts" on the pre-requisite list. And who is it that is going to post judgement on these ladies? Michael Rooker! Not sure how he got roped into this. But with these quirks put aside, these courageous women diligently keep the camera rolling for us despite their lives being in danger. And then for some reason in a post credit scene Lochlyn Munro shows up as a police officer wrapping up the case? Weird. You typically watch these wannabe torture porn flix for the violence but this flick definitely did NOT bring that, at least in the version I saw. I suppose it could've been edited which would explain the lack of brutality. The acting was very much on par with a b-budget horror flick with some awful performances. I had to find out what leads to the "true events" part, and this one is very loosely based on Graeme Stephen Reeves who was known as the Butcher of Bega right down here in my new neck of the woods, New South Wales. Click his name for info but he was basically performing illegal genital mutilations. The reality is far more interesting than this movie version was. I also don't believe he found his subjects by holding mock stripper auditions. And since Delfino wasn't exactly giving us an acting tour de force, believing her mother turned private dancer overnight routine was very hard to take seriously. The transformation was far too quick and really unsuccessful. Don't bother with this one, there are far better in all categories unless you like torture porn without graphic violence.

Seems freebies are the only way to go for this, and so far, most likely for the best.

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