Mia’Kate Russell’s 80s-set Ozsploitation horror is a muddled but energetic effort. There is a little too much blurriness around the edges, making relationships and motivations slightly opaque, while the last-minute entrances and exits are a bit on the haphazard side. But as a study of seething girl-on-girl anger that leads to ultraviolence, it is a gas.
Setting and setup
Set in Australia in 1986 (presumably because this means no mobile phones, and thus no calling for help), a trio of high-school besties prepares for a night of partying before the summer ends. Penny (Bailey Spalding) is planning to go to university to study law and asks her girlfriend Toni (Tahlee Fereday) to come with her. The two have only recently become lovers and they haven’t yet come out to their buddy Amy (Alexandra Jensen) – a sweet, childlike teen who still carries a stuffed tiger toy around for comfort.
And they most certainly haven’t come out to Kat (Sophia Wright-Mendelsohn, daughter of Aussie actor Ben Mendelsohn) – an erstwhile friend with whom they haven’t hung out for a while and who they didn’t think would show up that evening. Except here she is, bearing cupcakes for each of them with insults piped on the top in icing.
From Neighbours to nasty
Kat, it turns out, has drugged Penny’s cake, so she passes out and Kat’s super-skeevy ex-con boyfriend Angus (Ben O’Toole) shows up with his leather-clad crew – and suddenly it all goes from an episode of Neighbours to The Last House on the Left.
The bits where Wright-Mendelsohn and Fereday, both of them great, slug it out and hurl insults at each other are the best parts of the film, full of Catfight-style grudge-match malice. What’s more, director Russell started out as a film makeup artist, so makes sure the cast is smeared with red goo in such a way as to look both deranged and oddly fetching.
Penny Lane Is Dead is on Shudder and AMC+ from 28 August.
