Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: James Ashcroft
Starring: Geoffrey Rush, John Lithgow, George Henare
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.
The Rule of Jenny Pen is in UK
cinemas from March 14th.
