Penny Lane is Dead review: a gripping ripper

Content warning for sexual assault and violence.

It’s summer 1986 and school’s out in Mia’Kate Russell’s raucous riot grrrl punk horror debut feature, Penny Lane is Dead.

With The Angel’s Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again blasting on the radio, the denim shorts-rocking popular girl Penny Lane (Scrublands: Silver’s Bailey Spalding) is about to throw a party for three with her secret girlfriend Toni (Tahlee Fereday) and their adorkable bestie Amy (Alexandra Jensen), who’s armed with her emotional support teddy.

No sooner has Penny’s mum has dropped them off at the family beach house than the sneaky ciggie stash is fetched from the shed and the girls go on a bottle-o run to stock up on booze from goofy surf bros Nick (Matthew O’Sullivan) and Josh (David Roberts, not that one). What could possibly go wrong?

Girl fight

Penny Lane’s bad reputation cousin Kat (Sophia Wright-Mendelsohn) rocks up to crash the party. Kat holds Penny responsible for her fall from so-obviously-nowhere-near-grace.

A snake, Kat first appears spitting into cake mix that soon gets loaded with way more than saliva. All black lace and red tips, she dishes out abuse via pink-frosted cupcakes – ‘slut’ and the like – but it turns out only Penny’s is spiked. A furious Toni cuts loose at Kat, kicking her out, but not before the cig-flicking brat calls in the big guns.

Toni and Amy just manage to haul Penny into the bedroom before the bad seeds arrive in the slithering form of leather pant-creaking livewire Angus (Boy Swallows Universe actor Ben O’Toole), snarling bruiser Merrick (Beast of War’s Steve Le Marquand) and mutton-chopped Rodowski (Fletcher Humphrys).

Russell cranks up the tension in a near one-location stop as these odious ferals shovel coke while Angus slobbers over Penny’s pictures on the wall. Knowing how to push Kat’s buttons, Toni teases Angus with a come-on to get a rise out of her nemesis. But things spiral out of control when Amy lets slip that Penny’s KO’d next door and the night slides from bad to shit hits the fan with a shovel.

Penny Lane: beat the man

In this unapologetically Australian twist on horror’s rape-revenge subgenre, Russell isn’t afraid of equal opportunity meaning the ability to depict Kat as a real bad bastard.

The writer/director wisely ratchets the action into an overdrive of one-ups, refusing to slow down and spell out exactly what Kat’s damage is, or how she could stand idly by and all but cheerlead Angus as he assaults her cousin. But we can easily read the festering self-esteem deficiency that has her lashing out at family while desperately clinging on to a dirtbag.

O’Toole is unnervingly good in the little big man role, a daddy’s boy playing at being a hardened crim. He has a simmering beef with Le Marquand’s hulking brute Merrick, who just wants to cut a deal and go and has jack shit interest in Angus’ villainous theatrics.

With Penny out of the picture in diabolical fashion, Toni, like Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley or Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor before her, has no option but to transform her teenage dream into a battle for survival. Fereday, so good in Erotic Stories and Triple Oh!, utterly convinces, with a surfer’s nimble litheness allowing her a fighting chance against these murderous goons who think nothing of dispensing of young women they’ve toyed with and broken.

Soon slathered in blood as she arms herself with a handy scimitar, Toni will not take shit lying down. Exactly who’s hunting who plays out as a frantic push-pull that ricochets like the bullets that soon fly.

Kiss and makeup

Russell has wealth of experience working in hair, make-up and special effects on films like Nitram and Better Man, and TV shows like New Gold Mountain and Clickbait. Working with hot shot department heads including production designer Erica Ockenden and costume whizz Anita Seiler, Russell believably builds the detail of the where and when of Penny Lane is Dead, creating a world like Summer Bay circa Bobby and co.

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Sicko supreme Evil Dead special effects guru Luke Polti keeps the squeals mighty real, too, with hamstring swings that’ll make you spew and more than enough maple syrup stand-in blood to make faces into pancakes, then cheesegrate them for good measure. It’s a gorefest spectacular with a soundtrack stacked with bangers.

The darkness of Penny Lane is easily countered by its fully whack sense of humour. When one of the bros gets it you-know-where, the Adelaide Film Festival audience at the film’s world premiere roared.

If Amy’s story doesn’t quite get the attention Talk to Me star Jensen deserves, it’s a small niggle in a 90-minute blast of toxic masculinity smashing that will have you hooting and hollering along until the romance-ripped final shot gloriously queers the genre. Mighty matriarchal in all the right ways, Russell’s graduation from shorts revs up the crowd and goes full throttle.

Penny Lane is Dead screens 21 October as part of the Adelaide Film Festival, with wider release in 2026.

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