Penance (2009)

It's Blair Witch Project style y'all! With tapes found at the abandoned Lichtenstein Hospital for the Criminally Insane... though it's not all tape. They mix things. I wonder if Blair Witch did, I don't quite remember now...

It's the story of 24 y/o Emilia Wallace anyhow, who goes for a lucrative one-time side-gig as a stripper in order to make money for her son, and a dying man (so I thought - he seemed intent on ending himself too) who wishes to purify strippers in order to make penance with himself... or so I thought. Does he really think he'll get a place in heaven this way? Twisted minds sure are twisted but...

Graham McTavish plays the butcher - though why butcher in particular I wonder. Seems another name would've been more suitable.

Something more sadistic and twisted. Something less violent.

Michael Rooker contributes the violence - though his role is a small and temporary one - he's pretty much just there for beginning and end.

Marieh Delfino plays the main character. The young mother. She does get emotional. Good act.

They have a real pornstar in the mix too: Alice Amter, though no scenes as you might expect there to be with a movie like this.

It's not sexual. It's just... twisted.

The plot quickly becomes monotone too.

The violence is sedentary - showing aftereffects more so than actual brawls and brasher moments. It starts with a stripshow and ends with a whipped hoe, interrogations, a hospital ward setting with well-played characters that does feel uncomfortable... but also unnecessary, and hard to believe, and very jumpy.

If this was real surely it'd play out differently. Surely they'd know who they were bringing to the ward - or they wouldn't care so much as to who they do bring. Surely... their twisted business would be worse than this is too.

It feels like a somewhat meaningless movie, though the actors did a good job.

Nice one with the toothpick too Michael. Imagine if it really did get stuck that way during some more intense part of that one scene...

 rated 2.5/5: almost not bad