The Rule of Jenny Pen: The Twilight Years Just Got Darker

By Thom Ernst

Rating A-

If memory serves, John Lithgow’s affable alien in Third Rock from the Sun aged not older but younger. Now imagine that same character as a senior but instead of being comically eccentric, he’s a terrifying, demented bully. That’s the Lithgow director James Ashcroft gives us in the psychological thriller The Rule of Jenny Pen.

Lithgow has portrayed villains before, but none as manically depraved as Dave Crealy. Crealy is a psychopath and an intimidating tyrant whose psychosis has either gone undetected or has recently emerged due to a severe form of dementia.

Crealy harasses the residents of a retirement home using a hand puppet named Jenny Pen, after a favourite singer. Jenny Pen is ominous in its simplicity; a child’s toy shaped out of a fabric torso with an oversized plastic doll’s head.

Crealy demands absolute obedience to Jenny Pen's authority, and Jenny Pen rules through extreme pain and humiliation. Those who defy Jenny, and even those who comply, risk facing humiliating, torturous, and potentially fatal repercussions.

Enter Stefan Mortenson (Geoffrey Rush in fine form), a quick and sharp-witted judge who becomes the most recent addition to this community of seniors. Mortenson has a courtroom manner that would unsettle Judge Judy. He’s been known to declare equal responsibility to both perpetrator and victim when a crime has been committed. Mortenson and Crealy are two characters deserving of each other.

Mortenson suffers a stroke, resulting in his confinement to a wheelchair and “temporary” placement in a senior care facility for recovery. The term "temporary" is used with caution as, like other residents, there is a common misconception that their stay is not permanent.

While Mortenson retains full intellectual capacity, time is not on his side. The extent of his vulnerability due to age, illness, and neglect becomes evident when he witnesses a horrifying accident.

Lithgow and Rush reveal themselves to still be masters of their craft, working not just from the page, but in collaboration with each other. It is a treat not only to see these veterans perform together but to see them perform in a genre typically reserved for the young.

There is not a character under 40 in the film. But as good as Lithgow and Rush are there is one more performance of note; Nathaniel Lees plays Sonny Ausage, a celebrated rugby star of Maori descent. Sonny has become one of Crealy’s main targets, reducing this once proud and celebrated man to a frightened, weak, victim of unprovoked cruelty.

The Rule of Jenny Pen is based on author Owen Marshall’s short story of the same name. The disturbing depictions of senior abuse — both institutional and personal through Crealy’s tormenting actions and the frustrating inaction of the home’s staff — is what makes this a horror film.

Even so, labelling the movie as horror is more a distinction of convenience than a statement of accuracy, a way of better positioning the film within the Shudder brand.

Ashcroft’s direction exhibits a notable resemblance to the style of Peter Strickland, whose horror films often present an unsettling depiction of the mundane. This should not be mistaken for dullness.

Instead, the mundane is an aesthetic that conceals secrecy, fear, and denial, even when characters —mostly Cleary — breach the limits of normalcy. The mundane also serves as a response to the initial —and indeed justified — reactions regarding how Crealy’s abuse can remain unchecked and unaddressed.

The Rule of Jenny Pen is a dark and deeply unsettling film. Lithgow is unhinged and Rush is the perfect foil to attempt to bring him down.

The Rule of Jenny Pen. Directed by James Ashcroft. Starring John Lithgow, Geoffrey Rush and Nathaniel Lees. In select theatres March 7.