Hal Kitchen
In his book The Psychopath Test author Jon Ronson observes that there’s no cure for psychopathy. Once diagnosed with it, most psychopaths continue being callous and manipulative to their dying day, or until infirmity claims them and they’re simply no longer capable of being Machiavellian. In The Rule of Jenny Pen, based on the short story of the same name by Owen Marshall, we see how sadistic tendencies thrive in a community of people who have been robbed of their agencies, “Where there are no lions, hyenas rule”.
Stefan Mortensen (Academy Award winner Geoffrey Rush) is a respected magistrate who has spent his life dispensing justice and punishing the cruel. However, fate has its own cruelties in mind and he suffers a stroke, sending him into a retirement home. Like many of the patients there, he tells himself his vulnerability is only temporary and he’ll be going home once his physical therapy starts to show promise, he’s proud, defiant and condescending to the other patients, that is until he meets Dave Creasy (John Lithgow, recently seen in Conclave). Creasy cuts a sinister figure—he is played by John Lithgow after all—shuffling around wearing a hand-puppet made from an eyeless child’s doll (created by M3GAN puppet designer Paul Lewis). Just how sinister he truly is becomes apparent at night when Creasy shakes off his facade of feigned senility and roams the halls tormenting other residents including Stefan and his roommate Tony (George Henare of Once Were Warriors). It’s a nightmare scenario familiar to cinema, the annals of which are full of characters wrongfully institutionalized and tormented by vindictive or corrupt individuals and power systems. Here, we get a darker, more surreal and bitter take on the subject.
Recent horror movies—most notably The Substance but also another recent antipodean chiller, Relic—have explored the horror, indignity and discomfort of aging, and although The Rule of Jenny Pen is certainly uncomfortable viewing, it does an admirable job portraying elder abuse without sensationalizing or dehumanizing its subjects. The staff at the care home are not neglectful or abusive themselves, they’re just busy people in a mundane situation, there is a level on which being cared for by paid professionals is inherently dehumanizing and its easy to understand how the staff fall into their prejudices, seeing Stefan as a proud, difficult and confused old man and Creasy as harmlessly senile, especially when that’s the image Creasy deliberately constructs.
The Rule of Jenny Pen is about the loss of dignity, and that is very much tied to the indignity of infirmity and senility, but that’s where the genre wrinkle comes into play. Rather than the sad tale of an erudite man’s decline, it’s a battle of wits between a diabolical sadist and a proud and wiley judge, who correctly identifies Creasy’s weakness lies in his own pride. Like all psychopaths, he relishes his feeling of superiority and uses the doll to protect himself, he demolishes the dignity of others because his own sense of pride is so valuable. It’s a grim, unpleasant, frustrating and yet cruelly compelling tale and the great strength of The Rule of Jenny Pen lies in the satisfaction of watching two titans of the screen pit their wills against one another. Lithgow and Rush shared the Best Actor prize at the Stiges Film Festival for their performances and both are tremendous. It’s rare for men their age to get such choice leading roles and both men relish the opportunity.
Lithgow has the showier part, chewing the scenery as the all-singing, all-dancing villain of the piece, but Rush is, if anything even better, investing Stefan with a potent mixture of pride, honor and misanthropy, raging against his situation whilst trying to maintain his all important composure. Seeing the two at loggerheads is mesmerizing and a great reminder that seeing two veteran character actors wind one another up for ninety minutes can be just as scintillating as watching the hottest young stars quip and flirt their way through a string of set pieces. Completing the central trio is George Henare, who is every bit as important a presence as Rush and Lithgow. He plays Tony Garfield, Stefan’s roommate and one of Creasy’s favorite victims, choosing to nobly submit to his torment rather than further his own indignity by causing a scene. Henare’s quiet dignity and containment is a stark antidote to the theatrical sparring of his co-stars, and he’s excellent in the role maintaining the necessary equilibrium.
Director James Ashcroft is only two features into his career with The Rule of Jenny Pen following on from his 2021 thriller Coming Home in the Dark, also based on a short story. Despite this The Rule of Jenny Pen displays a fierce sense of atmosphere, pacing and dramatic force, making his Wellington’s Wairaki resort as claustrophobic and sinister as the Overlook Hotel. The sound design and musical cues are especially bold, giving the film a sense of the grotesque and dark humor, you’ll never hear “Knees Up Mother Brown” again without picturing the leering, puffing face of John Lithgow auditioning to play The Joker.
There’s no denying that The Rule of Jenny Pen is a deeply nasty film, and I’ve never been drawn to “gaslighting” stories like this, but I was gripped from the very first scene and my attention never wavered. It’s an original concoction and offers a terrific balance of psychological thrills, with a couple of great twists and an underpinning of really solid character work reflecting on moral duty, standing up to tyranny and slapping the s–t out of perverted old creeps.
