There are few news stories that rile us up quite like revelations of elder abuse in retirement or convalescent homes. Bullying old people who can't defend themselves is about as low as it gets, so to hear of such horrors really makes our blood boil. But while we sympathise with the victims of such crimes, it also sets us selfishly thinking about our own uncertain futures, of whether we might end up in such a place and find ourselves similarly victimised.
New Zealand director James Ashcroft plays into such fears with The Rule of Jenny Pen, which he adapted with co-writer Eli Kent from a short story by Owen Marshall. The film offers a now rare leading role for Geoffrey Rush, who plays Stefan, a judge who suffers a stroke in the middle of delivering a sentence at the end of a disturbing trial. Having lost most of his life-savings through bad investments, Stefan finds himself sent to a shoddy second-rate retirement home, naively believing that he's only there temporarily until his health improves, but his increasingly unresponsive body tells a different story.
His career as a judge having left him with a dim view of his fellow man, Stefan is none too happy when he's forced to share a room with Tony (George Henare), a former rugby star whose talkative demeanour grates with the cantankerous judge. Tony proves the least of Stefan's problems however when he finds himself targeted by Dave (John Lithgow), a long-time resident who rules the home with a reign of nocturnal terrors, sneaking into residents' rooms at night and menacing them with a horrific hand puppet he's named "Jenny Pen." When Stefan attempts to use his advanced intellect to take Dave down with some barbed wit, it only makes Dave more ruthless in his campaign of terror.
The Rule of Jenny Pen has an initially similar setup to Axelle Carolyn's 2021 film The Manor, in which Barbara Hershey plays an aging woman who finds herself menaced by supernatural forces in a retirement home after suffering a stroke. But despite the involvement of horror streamer Shudder and marketing that heavily focusses on Dave's gruesome puppet, Ashcroft's film is a down to earth thriller with a very human villain. The puppet, which is essentially an infant with its eyes plucked out, may look like the perfect receptacle for paranormal possession, but it's simply a prop wielded by a sadistic old duffer. This is a movie about man's inhumanity to man, with the sort of bullying you find in school playgrounds carrying on into old age, all because nobody dared to stand up to Dave.
As such, it proves a grim watch. Scene after scene of elder abuse becomes suffocating, and the movie plays up our fears of being unable to move while someone takes advantage of our prone state as Stefan becomes increasingly bedridden. Lithgow is an actor who has stretched himself over his career but it's his villains who have stood out the most in his filmography, and Dave might be the most repugnant of them all. Towering over the rest of the elderly cast, it's easy to see him as an intimidating figure. Lithgow adopts an antipodean snarl reminiscent of John Jarrett's serial killer in Wolf Creek. Rush is excellent as a man who has used his mind to outwit foes in the past but now finds himself facing brute force and pure evil.
The menacing air becomes so gruelling however that the horrors of Jenny Pen threaten to become repetitive, and despite setting up some potential twists and turns, the movie peters out to a disappointingly generic ending. Ashcroft's film is very good at playing on our fears of being tortured by some cruel sociopath in our dotage, but it never quite does anything beyond reminding us how awful we can treat one another when we're given a little bit of power to do so.
Directed by: James Ashcroft
Starring: Geoffrey Rush, John Lithgow, George Henare
