A stroke sends an elderly judge to a nursing home, where he faces off against a sociopath in the new Shudder original featuring Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow.
The Rule of Jenny Penn is wonderfully subdued, keeping a simmering boil of restraint from director James Ascroft, co-writing with Eli Kent from a short story by Owen Marshall, exploring the terror of aging, the loss of control, and how to gain it back no matter what it takes.
There’s an inherent horror in aging. The prospect of growing frail and losing control of one’s faculties and life situation looms. Many excellent horror films have used this concept for its terrifying possibilities of reality. The question of what we might face in our later years is already scary, one of the largest unknowns, second only to the death that follows. There is real terror in the loss of control, an inability to help those in need around or even oneself. People make decisions for you, your mind might not be as strong as it used to be, and your memory may blip.
The Taking of Deborah Logan, focusing on the effects of Alzheimer’s, would be unsettling enough without the added supernatural overlay. George A. Romero’s “lost” film The Amusement Park, also on Shudder, was a deeply sad, uncomfortable, brilliantly realized metaphor. It’s one of his best. Even the immensely silly Bubba Ho-Tep has statements about how society treats the elderly.
In The Rule of Jenny Pen, Judge Stefan Mortensen, played by Geoffrey Rush, is forced to face the hard truths of his failing body. As a stroke leaves his limbs in a state of partial control, he’s forced to move into a retirement home very much against his will. A sudden shift in lifestyle is shocking and terrifying. The situation is compounded as he becomes the target of fellow resident Dave Creely, a terrifying John Lithgow as a sadistic sociopath ruling over his tiny kingdom with menace and a strange doll puppet on his wrist (the titular Jenny Pen).
It’s a chilling delight to witness the clash of the two powerhouse actors. Rushs’ Mortensen is a surly, pompous ass, often condescending and distancing. He’s a jerk, but also believes in justice and calling out wrongs. It’s fitting that the case he was trying during his stroke is of abuse of children, powerless to the adults in control. Rush makes his jerk just sympathetic enough for the audience to follow willingly. It helps the other side is a power-mad sociopath. John Lithgow is an American treasure. He’s one of the greatest living actors, well-known and well-loved, but also a little unsung. He’s fantastic at playing the loveable, perhaps a little curmudgeonly, protagonists, but he shines in his villain roles. Whether it’s schemy sorts such as his Cardinal Tremblay in last year’s Conclave, to straight up monsters of DePalma’s Blow Out and the Trinity Killer on Dexter, I love watching the despicable side of Lithgow. For Creely, Lithgow leans into the chilling cruelty of a lifelong bully, still working his nasty nature. Lithgow is relishing the evil, but refrains from chewing too much scenery; being just big enough to be horrific instead of impish. His New Zealand accent (this is a Kiwi production) comes and goes strangely; I thought there would be something from this that never came to light.
We all know people like Creely. He’s been present at the home for a long time, delighting in his cruelties and control. He sneaks, he’s sly, he keeps poking at emotional wounds, grinning his yellow-toothed smile in forcing his will. He’s not the least bit happy to have Mortensen call him out, questioning his power. But he’s also smart enough to be deniable to the staff, either evading any suspicion or playing the “eccentric old guy” card.
Kent and Ashcroft never let the reality get away from them. Creely has violent acts, big moments, and a large energy, but he never comes off cartoonish or “no way can this old man do that.” Suitably, Jenny Pen herself is simple, a hollowed-out baby doll rather than an overly complicated and detailed “movie murder puppet”. That doesn’t mean it’s not incredibly creepy (especially in how Lithgow uses it). Instead, Ashcroft shoots the film with menace. There’s an air of malice and unease; giving visual to both Rush’s disassociation with his new lot in life and Lithgow’s power over him and others.
Where others may make the place a hotbed of evil, misscare, or neglect, Ashcroft and Eli again show restraint in their setting. Ashcroft shoots the other residents in a way that presents a sadness to the overall situation of the home. There’s a sadness to the left lives, banished to this place, often infantilized. The staff is caring, but swamped with work; their inability to help the judge or see his tormentor clearly is only due to how much they are forced to deal with on the daily. When so many have some sort of delusion, a resident claiming terror from another out of sight is more easily discounted; again, the horror of helplessness.
The Rule of Jenny Pen might be too slow for those expecting bigger moments, more audience-satisfying payoffs, or even bloodshed and kills. The film has a simmering intensity as a tete-a-tete of two old men, still working their considerable acting talents, face off in an original and menacing film.