‘We don’t stop playing because we get old, we get old because we stop playing...’
Is there anything more horrifying than ageing? It can’t be stopped. You can’t buy your way out of it. The relentless march of time comes for all of us. The Rule of Jenny Pen presents us with a psychotic bully, but the real terror comes from the fact that every minute of every day, we all move one step closer to old age…
Following a stroke, hard-headed judge Stefan Mortensen (Geoffrey Rush) is forced into a care home for convalescence due to partial immobility. It soon becomes clear that there is something very wrong with Dave Crealy (John Lithgow), a long term resident who terrorises the other inhabitants of the care home with an incredibly unsettling hand puppet he calls Jenny Pen. Stefan shares a room with Tony (George Henare), who allows the bullying to continue despite being a former professional rugby player.
New Zealand director James Ashcroft announced himself to the horror world with his 2021 film Coming Home in the Dark. Like that film, The Rule of Jenny Pen is adapted from a short story by fellow Kiwi Owen Marshall, and like his previous effort, this sophomore film is brutal, nasty and viciously effective. Landing a pair of actors as talented and distinguished as Rush and Lithgow is a real coup, and it this duo who ensure that …Jenny Pen never feels like a B movie, despite the hysterical subject matter. Lithgow gives perhaps his most demented performance yet, harking back to the kind of manic, wild-eyed turns he delivered in the early ’90s.
Ashcroft takes the process of ageing and turns it into body horror. Lithgow’s rotting teeth and Rush’s crumpled left side both serving as physical reminders of their (and our) mortality. As we see the events of the film unfolding from the point of view of the newly impaired judge, we suffer the confusion, time slips and bewilderment along with him. His disorientation adds to the horror and is ruthlessly exploited by Lithgow’s insidious Crealy.
The Rule of Jenny Pen will be an uncomfortable watch for many. It forces us to confront what all life must eventually lead to – decay. There is no greater horror than that.
