After years of keeping her house ready for her beloved husband’s return, Penelope is finally able to greet him –just not in the way she planned. As a night of terror unfolds, our Southern Belle is forced to come face-to-face with the cost of the promise she kept.
With grit, grain, and hand-held camera, “Penelope!” brings us into the civil-war-era south –devoid of romance and glamor. Penelope shows us the cost of chasing a dream that never existed, at the expense of the things that do.
Notes from the Director – Colin Henning
We have all seen images of the ‘sunny south;’ of the ‘glamorous antebellum.’ Although these depictions are not rooted in Gone with the Wind, this film’s role in popularizing the romance of antebellum society could not be overstated. The shadow of this legacy is its appeal –particularly in the South– to depict the ‘fairytale’ of the antebellum South. “Penelope!” lets in the daylight on the fairytale by going deeper.
I was raised in North Carolina, where the cultural fight between liberal higher education and conservative indoctrination was –and is– always raging. The dissonance between what the South means to some, versus what it does to them, was always stark.
The ‘Lost Cause’ fallacy lays at the heart of this dissonance.
The Lost Cause continues to present itself as an appealing piece of historical negationism to conservatives. The attachment of conservatives to rhetoric that depicts the antebellum South as unproblematic begins to guide their principals toward political people and parties that make decisions based on fantasy, not reality. Unfortunately, we see that this has very real consequences.
“Penelope!” is a fable depicting –on an individual level– how choices in pursuit of the wrong values tear us apart from the inside. When we chase fantasy, and not reality, we destroy ourselves.
Watch the Trailer below:
PUBLICITY
BEHIND-THE-SCENES
“Colin Henning returns to his lurid ways with a confident outing in Penelope!. It’s a charming throwback with a thoroughly creepy dose of modern horror in one neatly bundled package.”
–Mark Lakatos
“Penelope! is all about the visual tone the filmmakers create to illustrate their point. DP Hylton beautifully (and ominously) recreates the setting of Gone With The Wind and masterfully turns it into a Southern Gothic horror location”
–Alan Ng
C.H. Squared walks us through the opening of "Penelope!" and takes us BEHIND THE SCENES to some of the film's pivotal moments!
Actress Georgia Morgan takes us through the theme and character of Penelope.
Get to know "Scream Queen" Georgia Morgan with these 3 questions!
Hylton and Henning attend BAFF for “Penelope!” and Impressions.