Penny Lane is Dead – Movie Review
A farewell to high-school party between four “friends” turns wildly deadly in Penny Lane is Dead, the feature-film directorial debut of seasoned hair and makeup artist Mia’Kate Russell, which blends incredibly dark comedy with an 70s Oz-ploitation vibe and B-movie grindhouse sentiment to the result of a movie that certainly is a little chaotic, but a lot of grimey and gory fun for the horror sickos out there.
The high-school friends are Amy (Alexandra Jensen), Toni (Tahlee Fereday), and the titular Penny Lane (Bailey Spalding). And also their somewhat estranged friend Kat (Sophia Wright-Mendelsohn), who opens Penny Lane is Dead making four cupcakes for their small shindig, using icing to name each one for their respective recipient – dog, fat, slut, and Kat. Kat has also spat in and put crushed up pills in the cakes, as she seeks to get some form of revenge on Penny (who is Kat’s cousin and a promising law student) out of what seems like pure jealousy and annoyance.
It seems like Kat’s plan is working when Penny eats her cupcake, causing Penny to collapse and scaring the other girls into kicking her out of the house. But, when Kat calls her drug-dealing, much older boyfriend Angus (Ben O’Toole) and his cronies to come pick her up, their toxic, predatory, disgusting nature becomes a night of life or death for the girls who just wanted to celebrate finishing school.
One of Penny Lane is Dead’s pure strengths is the performances of the four leads. The dynamic, both friendly and antagonistically, is authentically brought to life by each actress and serves an equal amount of humour and awkward tension. Russell’s script and the four core performances carry this idea that the relationship dynamics between the high-schoolers could exist in any time period, not just the 80s, which also makes investing into their dynamic all the more effective. It also means that when the shit hits the fan, you care about the outcomes of their fates as the audience, while enjoying how much each actress leans into the horror that emerges in the film’s second half.
No stranger to leaning into grindhouse horror (see Russell’s short film work like Death by Muff or her contribution to The ABCs of Death franchise), Russell sets her wild story in 1986 Australia, where the hair was big, the music was banging, and the booze was flowing. The movie opens with The Angels’ ‘Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again’ (the spiritual national anthem of Australia), immediately transporting the film into its 80s era. Along with the wonderfully executed period makeup and costuming, as well as the set design of Penny’s house (where the movie predominantly takes place), Russell and her team have done a brilliant job in bringing to life the 1980s Australiana in a way that really pays homage to the feel of the Oz-ploitation era of Aussie cinema.
The other homage to Oz-ploitation is the splattery horror violence – and it is splattery. Once the action kicks off, Russell isn’t afraid to push the violence and gore to extreme, sometimes absurd, levels. The practical effects, prosthetics, and litres of corn-syrup thick blood brings that B-movie grindhouse element so strongly to the forefront. Nothing is off limits and no body part is sacred when it comes to the meat grinder that is this film. However, while some of violence can lean into the more fun side of the grindhouse sentiments, where the film slightly falters is within the source of the violence, and the darkness that it stems from.
There is a tonal whiplash that occurs in the back hour of Penny Lane is Dead. The Aussie 80s Mean Girls style banter that kicked off the movie, and set up the antagonistic nature between Kat and the other girls so well is soon completely derailed by the arrival of the psychotic Angus, and this is where the darkness takes over. While O’Toole absolutely chews up the scenery as the film’s villain, the violence that he and his douchebag mates engage in stems from a darkly realistic place.
The male on female violence is brutal, unsettling, and effective (even a tough to watch scene of female on female violence may even take the cake for the most brutal moment), and absolutely makes the idea of gore-filled revenge for the high-schoolers all the more earned. But, its dark realism very quickly nips the darkly comedic elements in the bud, but not without returning to those quippy moments sporadically throughout the film’s second half. It’s not that each opposing element is executed poorly. In fact, it is quite the opposite. It’s that they don’t work well in tandem with each other, making the film feel like it’s more structurally chaotic than its own premise.
All in all, Mia’Kate Russell has made an impressive debut stylistically with Penny Lane is Dead, with characters that are very well written and performed. And despite the tonal clashes making the film a little harder to really get on board with in the second half, there are elements in those separate tones that are very well executed.
Penny Lane is Dead is in Australian cinemas July 23
