Matcollis This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Sammy-Jo Cervantes There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Brenda The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

TdSmth5 We are told that what we are about to see are tapes found at a hospital for the criminally insane. Uh huh, that's not good.Next we meet a girl named Amelia, talking to the camera. She's actually applying for an extreme life makeover show. She's a got a kid with some disease that eventually will end up costing tons of money to treat, she's in debt already, and her job, to report abuses at a woman's shelter, doesn't pay much. She gets a friend of hers to "film everything." Another friend, Suzie, offers to help her gain some confidence in herself. But Suzie is a stripper so her little course involves... stripping among other things so she even convinces Amelia to give stripping a try for some fast easy cash. At first it works out alright for Amelia. One day Suzie calls her over, she's been beat up. Amelia is outraged and wants to document it to report it but Suzie doesn't want to. Instead she suggests Amelia take her place in a stripping job that pays $3000. Amelia reluctantly accepts.She's picked up in a limo, driven to a secret location where she meets two other girls. They do a strip audition in front of an unknown and unseen guy. Next they are offered champagne and faint. They wake up in locked cells. There are lots of other girls locked up in rooms as well. A foreign woman attends to them and zaps them with a taser whenever they misbehave. Finally, the obligatory Brit in formal military clothes (?) interrogates Amelia. He wants to know if she's a stripper, which she denies claiming it's all a misunderstanding. She's beaten until she admits it.In the meantime, we learn that the Brit is on a mission to purify the girls, to rid them of sin. They have to pass 3 tests if they want to make it out alive, that's aside from the punishments they have to endure. In the process he will take out their "fun parts." And in all this, he too, is purifying himself so he thinks, and he even walks the walk by removing his own fun parts. At last Amelia decides to take charge of the situation and will attempt to make it out alive after enduring a lot of suffering.I despise lost footage movies; the characters are always stupid and insufferable, the story cheap and basic, the dialogue moronic, the shaky cam is obnoxious and to top it off you always get lousy green nightvision. But Penance is different. The POV format doesn't distract and the video quality is good, that is until the setting changes to the hospital. Then suddenly audio becomes useless. Apparently they recorded audio live and it led to a lot of echo and very little clarity. On top of that, the character of the foreign woman speaks with such a heavy accent I couldn't make out anything she said. Video suffers also in this setting, it get's darker, grainier, colors get greener. But aside from that the story is excellent, apparently based on reality. The villain's justification goes even deeper than what I described and I enjoyed the rich story which is unusual for horror movies that don't bother to justify the villain's actions or why on earth someone is filming everything, but here it all has a good explanation.Very enjoyable is also the cast, all the girls are gorgeous and there's plenty of nudity. Usually movies that deal with torture try to clean things up by avoiding nudity, but fortunately not Penance. But it's the lovely Marieh Delfino who steals the show, a natural beauty with a natural body who is also an outstanding actress. Makes no sense that this girl hasn't gotten more work. Eve Mauro also does a great and hot job as always. I wasn't expecting much from Penance, but it's a very strong horror movie.

nether realm The movie is off to a bad start with the new wave horror cliché of being shot on hand-held camera, this is by no means a bad thing if it is done correctly such as the infamous "Blair witch project" and "Cloverfield", however in the case of penance it feels like this was done to save money and not add atmosphere or a sense of realism to the movie (if it did it was lost on me). But the cliché doesn't stop there, everything in the movie seems to have some overused explanation or have a means of tribute to other horror movies; This begins with the main character (Marieh Delfino) taking up stripping as for providing for her young child (as seen in striptease and a subplot in independence day), this tries crudely to justify the need to show her topless from the first five minutes of the movie (the justification for why some guy has to film her on his camera has an even worse explanation), quite honestly the sex appeal was pretty much the reason for me continuing to watch this movie. Secondly comes the cameos of both Tony Todd and Michael Rooker, Todd established himself as a respectable horror movie actor with his performance in the cult (if you like) classic "Candyman" and making further cameos in other horror movies such as in final destination 1&2, Michael Rooker who appears as semi-main characters or occasional villains had an unnecessary and wasted role as a character who does nothing but shoot prostitutes. Finally comes Graham McTavish who if the hobbit boosts his carer he will no doubt regret doing this movie and possibly the most disturbing scene in any movie ever where the word castration falls only too short. Next is the justification Graham McTavish's character has for kidnapping, holding and torturing prostitutes, the ever famous and over used justification of being in some extreme Christian cult (seen in devil rides out, blood on Satan's claw and witch finder general, not bad movies) of which his means is redemption, the justification of his three helpers are never fully explained and are seemingly just along for the ride, the torture methods used include; whipping (topless of course), beatings, verbal abuse and genital mutilation, admittedly McTavish plays a sinister religious zealot and is the sole reason for the movie not being a complete failure. Another feature which could be pointed out to give the movie some credibility is that you get what you see "torture porn" and doesn't seem like the kind of movie which takes itself seriously. Finally in the cliché agenda is the typical sub-tag-line of "based on true events", whether this case was (if it was I assume it was over- exaggerated, at least I hope so) or wasn't it just seemed like a good way to get a horror movie with a LOT of sex appeal and justify lack of story with this sub-tag-line, it is also suggested that Graham McTavish's character was based on a real person who performed many female genital mutilations (I'm unclear to whether this is true or who it is. Either way the whole movie seems too far-fetched to be based on true events especially the religious undertone. The conclusion of this movie is that it seems like a chance to explore excessive amounts of nudity and torture, what saves this movie from being among the worst is that the acting is mediocre and not horrible, the scripting is nothing special but there is far worse, finally there is no one in this movie who could be classed as a "bad actor or actress" and to be fair you lose concentration on such matters with such high sex appeal of which previously stated is the only thing which keeps interest there is not much else that can be said for this movie if your into torture porn this is a must-see but otherwise not a movie to go out of your way to watch, and definitely not for the squeamish.

dwayne-miller This film lures its viewers down into an graphic and disgusting abyss around the role of being a stripper, and attempts to terrify strippers and pre-strippers away from the lifestyle. Shot in documentary style, we are taken into a dark world that crosses between stripper life, trickery, and dark religion.A redeeming quality of the movie is how it gave the impression that certain risks aren't worth the reward and that desperation can bring us to threatful situations. Certainly not an original plot, but the movie was decent enough for viewership. The acting was alright by a mostly anonymous cast.Michael Rooker's character should have been predominantly featured as the character hadn't been seen in most of the film. He played his role well of a psycologically disturbed man who twists morality, righteousness, and penance to teach a lesson to the women that chose to sell their body. This movie is also not for the weak at heart and gets very graphic.All in all, I'll write it off as nothing special. You can give it a look though, but if you have a better film to watch, you should slip that in instead.

Arisenandawakened This movie strikes me on so many levels as absolute trash. I wish the lead actress was at least attractive. Although, she did have nice breasts... which was the only redeeming quality of this flick, gratuitous nudity. Especially in the case of one Eve Mauro. That girl is absolutely gorgeous. Smokin' hot! I think I would probably watch anything with her in it, at least once. But alas, I digress from my original reason for writing this."Candyman", "Dead Man on Campus", "Warlock" and Brandi Svennings dad all in one movie? They obviously did not invest wisely of their spoils from their actual roles in real movies... That, or the director/writer/producer caught and filmed them all in some suck-off man orgy together and blackmailed them into making this horrible movie.Actually a documentary on fecal matter would probably be more entertaining than this movie is...If you're a guy and thinking about watching this movie, punch yourself in the balls... really hard. That pain is as enjoyable as this movie is going to be for you. If you're a girl, rinse your eyes with vodka. Same goes...I will never understand how something as bad as this gets made. Along the line, people kept giving this the green light. HOW? The actors and actresses agreed to be in it. WHY? Distributors agreed to release it. Again I ask, in F's-name WHY? The economy is steadily slipping, but it seems the movie industry will throw copious amounts of cash to whatever idiot comes along. (I bet the screenplay was written in crayon.) I think "Clerks" cost a little over fifty grand to make. No actors, no sets and lastly, no color. Taking all of that into account, this movie at the very least, probably cost a cool quarter mil. WTF?!?! Are you serious?!?! In this day and age, Jake Whatever-his-name-is should be lynched for wasting that much money. Like rappers and athletes buying gold and platinum jewelry/teeth/wheels... but that's a whole other rant...I give it two stars. One for each of Eve Mauro's wonderful breasts. Nothing else.