Absolutely brilliant

It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

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 don't think this film was bad but i don't think it was great either. It is something i quite enjoyed watching though, it does more or less just stay on the actors stuck in a car for a very big part of the film but surprisingly it was alright, i didn't know what to think when i first saw it but thought i would give it a go.I think many horror fans will like this film as it isn't exactly gory, it is a little dark (literally), it involves a weird person (always good for horrors). The film runs for just the right length, it didn't drag, stuff started happening rather quick, makes you want to watch it to the very end.I think it deserves a 6 / 10.

For a low budget slasher film that doesn't have a lot of slashing, this is not a bad movie.True, the story line has more holes than swiss cheese, but the directing is relatively tight and the action more or less keeps moving at a decent pace.The biggest hole in the script is that Penny is supposed to be afraid of cars, but it appears she's afraid of everything. It would have been far better if we learned she had just been generally traumatized by her parents death or something.Anyway, Penny's character isn't well drawn, but what slasher film has well drawn characters? Plus it's sort of hard to sustain a film with basically just two or three characters. So the story tend to drag after a while.On oddity -- not so evident from the hitchhiker character who is hooded for nearly all of the movie, but I took a look at the actors on IMDb and the hitch hiker Is played by a woman. Still not sure if the character is supposed to be a man or a woman. That's never made clear, nor is this fact directed as a surprise.

WARNING, SPOILER ALERT!! Penny Dreadful really is dreadful. Basically you see Penny spend the whole movie trapped in a car endlessly cowering and crying, while some escaped lunatic tries to terrorize her from outside. The movie spends more time showing her losing her mind then it does showing anything else. After about 30 straight minutes of he panicking and whimpering, it just gets old. I found myself wishing the nut job would just finish her off already! The character was just plain annoying, the plot sucked, and the ending was lame. It took me 3 tries to finish this movie. I don't mind slow build up, but this just builds up to nothing but a waste of time.