“Where there are no lions, hyenas rule.”

There is no dignity in getting old. One loses their faculties, becoming a shell of themselves, particularly following a stroke, and down the long road to the inevitable we go. It’s the terrifying reality facing all of us, and for some, such as myself, even harder to accept than death itself. That makes a nursing home an absolutely inspired choice for the setting of a horror movie, as they can be a literal house of horrors with death around every corner.

The Rule of Jenny Pen—from co-writer and director James Ashcroft, based on the short story of the same name by Owen Marshall—takes advantage of the horror inherent in its setting. Geoffrey Rush stars as Stefan Mortensen, a New Zealand judge who suffers a stroke in the middle of a contentious sentencing, and whose lack of a family finds him confined to the Royal Pine Mews senior care center.

Convinced that he’ll be on his way as soon as he completes his rehab, Stefan doesn’t bother making friends with his roommate, former rugby player Tony (George Henare). And his snooty attitude certainly doesn’t endear him to the staff or the fellow residents, though Stefan does catch the eye of longtime resident Dave Crealy (John Lithgow). Crealy is part of a group of patients who utilize puppets in their therapy, and Dave is never seen without an eyeless baby doll puppet on his arm he calls Jenny Pen.

The interesting conceit of the film is that they have sidled the audience with an unreliable narrator who has no clue he’s unreliable. Stefan is consistently seen to be mentally sharp, but it’s clear when we step outside his purview that he’s not well at all. Therefore it’s hard to know if Dave Crealy and Jenny Pen really are sneaking into his room at night and terrorizing Tony, hitting his injured leg repeatedly and screaming. Surely someone hears this, we see staff all over the place, but there’s Dave and Jenny Pen, night after night, amping up his lunacy now that he has a captive audience in Stefan. What, precisely, is going on?

One of the stranger phenomena I’ve experienced while watching a movie occurred here, wherein several times in the last twenty minutes I thought, “oh, the movie’s just going to end right here, isn’t it?” Crealy is such a force of nature he just seems destined to be there terrorizing these poor folks—with total impunity I might add—for the rest of time. It feels like the film’s point is to reach no definitive conclusion, but it does, and it ends in brilliant fashion.

Horror is always crying out for something original, or something at least original enough within the confines and tropes of the genre. The Rule of Jenny Pen fits that bill perfectly, especially when allowing its leads to carve up a nice side of ham for everyone. This isn’t pure horror, though one could certainly watch it as such, but I found that the first hour is a comedy with horror thrown in, while the last forty minutes is the reverse. However, I’m far from your average filmgoer, so your mileage may vary as the kids once said.

Lithgow is in top form here, hamming it up like only he can, while also bringing the menace he brought to many villainous roles in his career, notably his work with Brian De Palma. He’s an actor who will work every inch of the leash he’s given by the director, and Ashcroft was wise to give him plenty of slack. Rush is also great, playing a self righteous prick loath to play the helpless old man card he sees so many around him playing. However, he’s just as helpless to the scourge of Dave and Jenny Pen, and Rush brings equal gusto to both sides of his character. Plus both actors bare their buns in the shower, which might be a symptom of my day job creeping into my side gig.

Perhaps the biggest hurdle for The Rule of Jenny Pen is convincing your average filmgoer to see it in the first place. It’s got as uncommercial a premise as you can get, though they really should’ve leaned into the Grumpy Old Men adjacent antics of its two leads. Yes, that would’ve been slightly dishonest, but what marketing campaign isn’t these days? It’s unfortunate that everyone doesn’t hear “John Lithgow and his baby doll puppet terrorize Geoffrey Rush in an old folks home,” and buy tickets immediately, but such is life. I, for one, am glad to be alive at a time when such beautiful dreams are a reality.

Header image via IMDb