Pretty Dreadful

I don’t particularly enjoy waching horror movies. I mean, one watches movies for various reasons. Be it for the heartwarming story, stimulating theme, intriguing plot, witty dialogues, enthralling visual display, or simply the fact that one has two hours to kill. I’m not entirely sure, however, that getting scared the crap out of one’s wit is one of them.

The missus, on the other hand, actually takes pleasure in being scared the crap out of her wit. She would sit back and thoroughly enjoy the offering while I cover my ears and squint my eyes in anticipation of boo-moments. Wuss, she would mutter coyly under her breath. Boo-moments merely causes her to flinch a little. In my case, it means a struggle to prevent instant seizure.

Some horror movies are actually enjoyable. The Exorcist and The Blair Witch Project are two examples. But these gems are few and far between. The missus’ fare usually constitutes of whatever 8 in 1 horror flick DVDs I manage to bring home from Stasiun Bekasi. Most of which are murderously annoying.

Take Penny Dreadful for example. The title per se should give an inkling what to expect. The girl Penny has a carphobia, which means she’s afraid of cars. There’s a correct technical terms, but I can’t seem to remember what the word is. I pointed out to the missus that she has motherinlawphobia, only to receive a steely stare in return.

Anyway, to overcome this phobia, she and her therapist engaged in a roadtrip. In a quiet mountain road they hit a creepy hooded man and then, as a show of remorse, took him along. Question: would you let a creepy hooded man into your car? I thought so. But then again, common sense seems to be a concept lost to horror flick characters. Most of them ended up dead, remember?

They then drove him deep into the woods off the main road. Night-time plus woods plus creepy hooded man equals to certain death. Simple math. But the two women were not dead yet.

After they dropped off their would-be killer (oops, was that a spoiler?) at an abandoned camp, the two would-be corpses set off for the main road. Before long, they realized that the creepy hooded man had spiked the front tire. The spare tire was also flat. Not a exactly an example of good motoring practice.

Penny went out of the car and just could not bring herself to get in again. The annoyance-meter starts to climb up. The therapist bluffed by leaving and Penny chased her and sprained her ankle in the process. Okay, so now Penny sat tearfully in the car.

The therapist decided to get help on foot and told Penny to stay in the car. Did Penny stay on the car? Of course, not. She wandered around as you would normally do if you sprained your ankle and were lost in the woods. Predictably, the creepy hooded man showed up and everything went black.

Our carphobic girl woke up to find herself stuck in a car with her dead therapist on the driving seat. She couldn’t open the door because the car was wedged between two trees. How on earth the creepy hooded man find those two perfectly-fitting trees was beyond me. Perhaps he was helped by the crew.

Having said that, I had to admit that it’s kinda cool to put someone who’s afraid of cars in a car and then throw in a corpse for a bonus. That’s like an extra scoop of icecream on your cone. Add the fact that the poor girl had to prise the corpse’s clenched teeth open with a screwdriver to get the cleverly-hidden car keys. That, my friend, is the cherry on top.

The director, or whoever is in charge, should have done better with this material than taking shots, and close ups, from various angles of Penny’s rather unconvincing terrified look and her squirmy escape attempts for a full 15 minutes. I wished the killer would show up and finish her off. She started getting on my nerve and the missus reminded me that we had depleted our supply of anti-depressants when we watched The Eye the other day.

Hope came in the form of a couple to whom the concept of motels is alien. Actually, I’d rather watch these two make out in their car for a full 15 minutes. Now, because the couple showed up when the film still has 45 minutes to play, anyone with half a brain should be able to predict their fate. Instead of simply smashing the windshield, the idiot decided to lift the front part while Penny hit the pedal to the metal in reverse. The creepy hooded man emerged from under the car and effortlessly drag the idiot guy under, alien-like.

Anyway the rest of the movie, involved more close-ups of Penny’s scared face, the whole car painted in blood, and near-escape by way of bare-handedly ripping a hole the backseat, which is funny because I have always thought backseats has steel-wire frame. And Penny kicking the creepy hooded man in the jewels. Imagine that, a girl with sprained ankle kick a man who snatched his victims like they’re a bag of popcorn. And the obligatory chase-camera shot that capture Penny running from the creepy hooded man. Well, more or less. I made two trips to the bathroom, brew a pot of tea and fried half a dozen pieces of battered banana.