The Rule of Jenny Pen, 2025.
Directed by James Ashcroft.
Starring Geoffrey Rush, John Lithgow, George Henare, Nathaniel Lees, Thomas Sainsbury, Maaka Pohatu, Irene Wood, Ian Mune, Bruce Phillips, Holly Shanahan, Paolo Rotondo, Yvette Parsons, Rashmi Pilapitiya, Ginette McDonald, Semu Filipo, Hannah Lynch, Anapela Polataivao, Hilary Norris, Richard Chapman, Nick Blake, Jane Waddell, Lutz Halbhubner, Ariadne Baltazar, Fiona Collins, and Sam Carter.
SYNOPSIS:
Confined to a secluded rest home and trapped within his stroke-ridden body, a former Judge must stop an elderly psychopath who employs a child’s puppet to abuse the home’s residents with deadly consequences.
While the idea of a crazed, sociopathic John Lithgow running around and using a baby puppet to torture fellow nursing home residents is appealing on a demented scale, director James Ashcroft’s (also co-writing the screenplay alongside Eli Kent, based on the short story from Owen Marshall) The Rule of Jenny Pen, no exaggeration, never involves beyond that and rarely even tries to. What starts as amusingly twisted quickly has nowhere to go, stretched out long beyond the breaking point at roughly 104 minutes in what amounts to nothing more than older warfare between Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow. As nutty as it sounds, even that needs something else behind it to keep the material from becoming repetitive and flat-out irritating.
The former is a judge named Stefan Mortensen who suffers a stroke while reading off a verdict. The case appears to involve a sexual predator of minors (not Drake this time) receiving due punishment, except Stefan is a no-nonsense curmudgeon refusing thanks from the mother of the victims, asserting that she put her children in danger. He then goes on to spout a philosophical statement that hyenas rule the land where there are no lions. Unsurprisingly, it’s a metaphor that’s about to become painstakingly visualized on-screen once that stroke immobilizes him, relegates him to a wheelchair, and keeps him inside the previously mentioned nursing home.
Initially, Stefan isn’t too bothered by the behavior he sees from Dave Crealy (John Lithgow, sporting a creepy smile and veering between catatonic and sinister), which generally comes down to finding unorthodox ways to hurt other residents or emotionally battering them physically. At that point, he flips the puppet around and tells his target to “lick its ass”, which is his hand. Other examples of his mischief include encouraging a dementia-stricken woman to head outside after hours, lying that her family has returned for her. For something more physical, Dave twists around a catheter until a man acknowledges the rule of Jenny Pen.
As uncomfortably and entertainingly dark as some of this begins, the film repeats itself without ever following through on any teased character development or reveals. Far more maddening is that this is the most unbelievably incompetent nursing home staff put to screen in ages. The only reason Dave continuously gets away with any of this has less to do with any damning statement on this line of work and more to do with eye-rolling contrivances that keep this movie going on seemingly endlessly in the face of strained credibility.
Some of this is frustrating, considering that John Lithgow is committed to this lunacy. In contrast, the stone-hearted Stefan becomes empathetic through Geoffrey Rush’s performance, especially as the character gradually realizes that his greatest horror might not be Dave but the reality that his mobility might never come back, meaning he will be stuck here forever. One also has to commend Geoffrey Rush for his electronic wheelchair maneuverability game, backing out of doors like he is reversing a car. Unfortunately for them, The Rule of Jenny Pen has stranded them inside nearly insufferable material that threatens never to end.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association, Critics Choice Association, and Online Film Critics Society. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews and follow my BlueSky or Letterboxd
