The Rule of Jenny Pen

John Lithgow and Geoffrey Rush deliver us a mighty duel, as well as a masterclass in character acting in James Ashcroft’s The Rule of Jenny Pen.

The new feature, debuting on Shudder today, delivers no more and no less than what it promises: A deeply creepy, ultimately engrossing battle of wills between two phenomenal lead performers.

The Rule of Jenny Pen offers a horrifying hypothetical: what if your final years were spent trapped with a racist bully?

The Rule of Jenny Pen has a lot going for it. Lithgow and Rush pull off strong performances, the escalation of tension is well-developed regarding the scenes taken as a whole, and the central conceit of the doll is used to strong effect.

It could hit harder, however, were its impact not diluted by the overly long runtime and uneven tone. For a movie that undercuts itself for its own amusement, however, intermittently successful is pretty good.

The film single-mindedly sees its elderly characters as objects of disgust or receptacles for harm.

We are simply beaten into bored submission — yes, we get it, he’s maaaaaaad! There are also glaring plot holes and contrivances aplenty. By the closing-reel murder it’s almost impossible to care.

Worst nursing home - EVER! Rush and Lithgow are great in this movie as adversaries. Lithgow is especially delightful as a sociopath who decides to terrorize the residents of an English nursing home. Rush is a new resident who has been afflicted by a stroke. There's a great set-up here, but there is a big problem. The staff of the nursing home is criminally negligent. They are never around when Lithgow is rampaging through the nursing home. This gets so out of hand, it stretches credibility.

(Mauro Lanari) A strand of austral cinema disregards the need for a logical screenplay, invoking a presumed mysterious and hostile nature of its land. From "Picnic at Hanging Rock" to certain works by Jane Campion and George Miller, up to the "Wolf Creek" diptych, things happen due to a malevolent genius loci. You watch Ashcroft's film hoping that the events will clarify as the minutes pass; instead, the opposite happens. A morbid atmosphere that kicks off with the most striking idea, the involuntary bonze, and then explores the meanders of a nursing home as if it were the delirium of the Overlook Hotel. Some come out satisfied, others with a headache.

Jenny Pen is the name of the hand puppet that John Lithgow’s character wears, as he terrorizes the residents in his assisted living community. Geoffry Rush plays a judge who suffers a stroke that sends him to the same facility. Thus begins the conflict between the bully and the partially paralyzed witness to the evil. Rush gives a stolid, serious performance, while Lithgow relishes in his creepy villainy. New Zealand director James Ashcroft effectively created the somewhat unpleasant environment with numerous patients in horrible, sometime helpless conditions. He’s also thrown in some dumb “dream sequences” and, as one of the writers, chosen to ignore reality with so many absurd situations (the caregivers never seem to be around when things go bad, even in groups). Lithgow and Rush are both Executive Producers on this film, which explains another reason they might want to be involved. There was potential to make a thriller, but Ashcroft chose to exploit discomfort without minimal tension to create this dreary drama.

Fewer moviegoing experiences are more frustrating than watching a film in which the creators have no clear vision for what they’re trying to say. Regrettably, such is the case with this second feature offering from writer-director James Ashcroft. When a revered judge (Geoffrey Rush) suffers a stroke, he’s moved to what has to be the most ineptly run convalescent home in New Zealand to undergo rehabilitation. While there, however, he – like many of the facility’s other residents – becomes the target of taunting and abuse by another patient (John Lithgow), a manic dementia case who menaces them with a macabre hand-held puppet he calls Jenny Pen, the one who he contends rules over everyone housed at the home. When the judge protests, though, he’s summarily ignored and called delusional by the utterly clueless staff, an aspect of the narrative that’s wholly implausible and undermines the credibility of whatever the story is supposed to represent. That’s made worse by a meandering story that seems to vacillate between presenting a straightforward tale of elder abuse and floating the possibility that the judge may indeed be suffering from his own internal delusions now that he’s trapped in his own stroke-afflicted body. That kind of purposeful ambiguity might have worked better if it had been employed more skillfully, but, as it stands, that uncertainty is never properly developed. And, as the film plays out, it grows progressively more unbelievable and disjointed, leaving viewers wondering what’s truly supposed to be going on. What’s more, this offering is laughingly billed as a horror flick, but there’s virtually nothing the least bit scary about it; it instead languishes in the realm of a modest (though largely unfocused and unengaging) psychological thriller. To its credit, the film incorporates some searing comic relief in the form of witty, pointed one-liners (mostly delivered by Rush), and the two leads struggle mightily to elevate this cinematic mess into something more respectable. But even their considerable talents – no doubt a casting choice aimed at providing a touch of class to a production unworthy of it – are not enough to salvage this woefully undercooked project. Please, do yourself a favor and don’t waste your time or money on this one.

I watched a man lick doll's bootie for an hour and a half 10/10. Very bad. Very bad. Very bad. Very bad. Very bad.