Day two is now past. The experience was a fair bit like day one, except with mandatory evacuation of the theater between movies so they could clean up. Despite losing the chance to maintain seats without a line rush every time, the cleaning thing made it superior. There’s nothing like stepping on someone’s old nacho tray, losing your balance, and wavering at the edge of eight rows of stadium seating to get your life flashing before your eyes. Well, I mean, other than an actual dangerous situation of some kind, clearly.

Speaking of dangerous situations bringing up painful memories, the first movie of the night was Penny Dreadful, the story of young Penny’s psychological struggle to get over her fear of cars. Which sounds stupid, until you take into account that her parents died in front of her in a horrific car accident, and that since the trip was for her, she blames herself. Luckily, she’s got a bottle full of pills, a relaxation cassette, and an overbearing psychologist to get her through her attempt to face her fears head on. If only there weren’t a psychotic hitchhiker with an inexplicable urge to toy with her by keeping her trapped inside the object of her terror, instead of killing her like everyone else who crosses his path, it probably would have been a successful trip.

Four bodies. One breast. Toe rolls. Not much else in the way of totals, because this is an edge-of-your-seat psychological thriller and hedge trimmers as murder weapons would be out of place. Drive-in academy award nominations to Penny’s mom for using her last strength to tell Penny she’d be okay and then proceeding to fountain her life out of the hole in her neck once the dialogue was over, to the park ranger for insisting, “There’s no killer. There’s nobody here but us!”, and to the relaxation tape guy for creating a relaxation method that consists entirely of closing your eyes and chanting the names of zoo animals. Despite that last bit, this has easily been the scariest movie of the festival so far; four stars. Lesson learned: never pick up hitchhikers (other than the perky, college aged, slightly crazy female variety; not that they’re any more safer, but at least it won’t have been a creepy person in a huge coat who offers you a skewer of unidentifiable uncooked meat out of his backpack; plus, she’ll probably take her shirt off), not even if it’s really cold outside and you feel guilty for having just hit them with your car.