Some horror films are terrifying. Some are unintentionally hilarious. And then there’s Penny Dreadful, which manages to be both boring and absurd, like watching someone panic in a locked car for 90 minutes while you wonder if your popcorn went stale. Directed by Richard Brandes, this low-budget ABC Family-looking “thriller” takes the premise of What if a car phobia became a movie? and proves, quite definitively, why some ideas should remain in therapy sessions and not on film.
The Setup: Fear of Driving, Fear of Dying, Fear of Dying of Boredom
Penny Deerborn (Rachel Miner) is traumatized by a childhood car accident that killed her parents, leaving her with a phobia of automobiles. Fair enough. Most people with trauma get counseling. Penny? She gets Mimi Rogers as Orianna, a therapist with the bright idea of curing car trauma by… taking her on a road trip through the mountains. Because when you’re terrified of something, the best solution is total immersion. Afraid of snakes? Here’s a pit full of cobras. Hate clowns? Let’s go to the circus. Fear cars? Let’s shove you in one for a full-length feature film.
It doesn’t go well.
On their scenic drive, Orianna hits a hitchhiker—because of course she does. The hitchhiker survives but is creepy enough to make everyone watching yell, “Don’t give him a ride!” Naturally, they give him a ride. Naturally, this ends poorly. The hitchhiker stabs a tire, vanishes into the wilderness, and sets in motion what feels less like a horror story and more like a DMV fever dream.
The Hitchhiker: Dollar-Store Michael Myers
The hitchhiker doesn’t talk much, which is fitting, since neither does the script. We eventually discover “he” is actually a deranged female mental patient (Liz Davies), which is meant to be shocking but instead lands with the force of a deflated airbag. She spends most of her time tormenting Penny by circling the car, filming murders, and generally acting like a slasher villain on Ambien.
Highlights include:
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Cutting off Penny’s toe for no reason other than, I guess, shock value. (Nothing says “scary” like podiatry horror.)
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Wearing Orianna’s clothes to cosplay as “Therapist Barbie, but Evil.”
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Delivering the unforgettable line: “Don’t forget your breathing exercises, Penny.” Because nothing kills the tension like reminding your victim to inhale and exhale.
If Hitchcock had Psycho, Brandes gave us Psych-No.
The Car as Coffin (And Plot Device)
The bulk of the film takes place with Penny trapped in her vehicle. That’s the concept. That’s the movie. Imagine Buried(Ryan Reynolds in a coffin) but with less acting skill, more screaming, and a setting that smells like old french fries.
Now, one-location thrillers can be riveting—Phone Booth, Locke, Devil. But Penny Dreadful turns the car into a padded cell on wheels. Instead of claustrophobic tension, we get repetition: Penny panics, hitchhiker torments her, someone wanders by to help, hitchhiker kills them, rinse, repeat. By the fourth round of this sadistic Groundhog Day, you’re less scared for Penny’s life than you are for your own time.
Performances: The Gas Tank Is Empty
Rachel Miner tries. She really does. She spends most of the film screaming, sobbing, and writhing in ways that would probably win her an Oscar at the Crying in a Car Festival. But even she can’t save a script that thinks “cutting off a toe” is a substitute for suspense.
Mimi Rogers as Orianna gets killed off early, presumably because she realized she was above this and had a respectable career to get back to. Michael Berryman pops in for a gas station cameo, reminding us that better horror movies exist. And Casey Sander, as the truck driver at the end, might be the only audience surrogate—when he panics, it feels authentic, probably because he realized he was about to be credited in Penny Dreadful.
The Ending: Limping Toward the Credits
The climax tries for shocking irony but lands with all the subtlety of a fender bender. Penny finally escapes the car, toe-less and traumatized, only to be stalked again. A truck driver seems to save the day by running over the hitchhiker, but no—plot twist!—she’s still alive. Penny breathes a sigh of relief too early, and the film ends on the revelation that the nightmare isn’t over. Cue credits. Cue groans. Cue someone in the editing room asking if they can also escape.
The Horror of Missed Potential
The premise—a woman with car phobia forced to face her fear while being terrorized—isn’t inherently bad. In the hands of, say, Mike Flanagan or Jordan Peele, you might get something layered: trauma as metaphor, the car as a coffin of memory, horror as therapy session gone wrong. Instead, Brandes serves us something flatter than a punctured tire.
The scares are cheap, the gore pointless, and the pacing glacial. Worse, the “reveal” of the hitchhiker’s identity feels like a desperate attempt at surprise. “A woman did it! Isn’t that wild?” No. It’s just lazy.
Darkly Funny Takeaways
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If your therapist’s cure for trauma is “let’s go confront it in the middle of nowhere,” get a new therapist.
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If you see a silent hitchhiker pointing ominously at the road, don’t pick him up. Don’t even slow down. Accelerate until you’re in another movie.
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If you’re going to spend 90 minutes in a car, at least make it interesting—put on a podcast, eat snacks, maybe even drive. Don’t just sit there waiting to lose a toe.
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Horror rule of thumb: when the villain reminds you to do your breathing exercises, it’s time to breathe your way out of the theater.
Final Verdict
Penny Dreadful is less dreadful in the Gothic-literary sense and more dreadful in the “why did I waste my Saturday night” sense. It’s a claustrophobic slog with the emotional depth of a parking ticket and the scares of a Halloween hayride running on empty. For all its attempts at psychological terror, it ends up as the cinematic equivalent of being stuck in traffic: loud, frustrating, and ultimately going nowhere.
If you’re a horror masochist who enjoys watching endless wheel-spinning, this one’s for you. Otherwise, do what Penny should have done from the start—stay out of the damn car.
