The Rule of Jenny Pen Delivers a Grotesquely Gripping Battle of Wills

There’s a razor thin line that exists between the privilege, respect and prestige of an autonomous existence, and the degradation and powerlessness of the existence that comes afterward. No one is as far away from the latter as they imagine themselves to be–one economic downturn, accident or illness, and the whole, carefully constructed safety cushion can (and will) unravel in an instant. This is doubly true, of course, for those of advanced age, or those without family who are bound by the rules of polite society to directly care for them. And it’s at that moment, when we’re at our lowest and most vulnerable, that a predator is likely to make its taunting presence felt. That’s what director James Ashcroft’s psychological horror film The Rule of Jenny Pen is all about: The dethroning of a petty tyrant using a blind spot in the system to inflict misery. It may not exactly be deep, or dependent upon layers of metaphor to divine its meaning. 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.

Those performers are Geoffrey Rush and Jonathan Lithgow, the former a steady hand at prestige dramas who is forever welcome in genre circles thanks to his scenery-chewing glee as Captain Barbossa in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and the latter a comedic everyman icon (and recent Oscar broadcast star) who has nevertheless occasionally played calculating madmen, such as his well-received turn as a serial killer in Showtime’s Dexter. Lithgow is here given a sterling opportunity to flex those diabolical muscles once again, turning in a slavering performance as a nursing home resident who has for years been conducting a sadistic reign of terror over the other enfeebled residents, until he finally runs up against a soul whose sheer stubbornness might be a match for his own. It’s a strong, simple, Hitchcockian central premise: Which will successfully break the other? Be it physically, mentally or spiritually.

The Rule of Jenny Pen is an interesting sidebar in the exploitation of old age and its accompanying fears–the loss of agency, power, and ultimate mortality–that is sometimes referred to as “hagsploitation” in horror geek parlance. More often than not, however, the elderly character/characters in a horror setting are objects of fear and repulsion to primary characters or protagonists who are younger, and thus more apt to view them with a disgust born from the youthful assumption that we will never end up in a similar boat ourselves. Jenny Pen is the rare story in the horror genre set almost entirely from the more sympathetic perspective of a collection of senior citizens, which is an important distinction.

Rush is playing Stefan Mortensen, a criminal judge of some notable prestige, who sees all his agency stripped away in a split second after a debilitating stroke that he suffers while delivering a verdict. One moment, he’s berating a mother in court for the role he says her negligence played in the harm of her children, and the next he’s being dismissed and infantilized by nurses and orderlies who wouldn’t have dared speak like this to him only a day earlier. The transformation in his ableness–he’s partially paralyzed on one side and struggles to stand–likewise transforms the way the world perceives him, and no amount of appeal to logic that Stefan applies to the situation can change that. It doesn’t matter that his mind still appears to be sharp–it just means that Rush’s character is left as an able-bodied intellect, raging against his new physical limitations.

It doesn’t help, of course, that Stefan is a dismissive, rather insufferably pompous intellectual asshole, lording his intelligence and worldliness over the other semi-normal residents who might otherwise have tried to befriend him in this new prison where he finds himself unwillingly lodged. Lord knows he doesn’t deserve to have to hear about such banalities as a Tom Clancy novel–that’s all far beneath the respectable judge, trash for the hoi polloi. Stefan is a man of culture, of sophistication. Besides, once he gets his strength back, he’ll be out of this place and will never have to think about these folks again. It all makes Rush’s character intentionally unlikable to a degree, though the intent is obviously to eventually force humbleness on him–he’s going to regret turning down what little community and solace he could be finding in this place. There’s a tragic element to Stefan’s imperiousness as he overlooks the parallels between himself and the other delusional residents who also believe they’ll be “going home” very soon.

At the same time, that stubbornness is both a shield against and a lightning rod for the kind of abuse that the seemingly psychotic Dave Crealy (Lithgow) delights in. Here we have a master manipulator, hiding in the guise of a diminished simpleton. To the staff of the nursing home, Crealy is a largely nonverbal, vacant, model resident. To the other residents, he’s a chatty demon who stalks the facility at night with seeming omnipresence, visiting various rooms to mock and torture the enfeebled both physically and mentally with the eyeless hand puppet–Jenny Pen–that he perpetually carries and uses as his sinister avatar. To allow for a momentary bit of geek analogy: He’s putting on a similar act to Game of Thrones’ Grand Maester Pycelle, playing a “harmless” and diminished person in the public eye in order to be overlooked as a source of potential harm. In reality, Crealy’s relatively spry nature allows him to function like an angel of death in this place, and his greatest delight is in sheer domination: Breaking the wills of the residents through a campaign of terror, so they don’t dare fight back or band together. Crealy, unsurprisingly, has no desire to ever leave the nursing home: This is the only place where he would be able to wield this kind of power. Only in a place where everyone is comparatively weaker, does Crealy have any relative strength, and he knows this. Better to reign in hell, etc. His bitterness about a wasted life manifests as pure, psychopathic misanthropy.

This state of play at the nursing home does beg some obvious questions: How has Crealy been able to get away with this stuff for so long, and why does he seem to have the unconditional trust of the staff? The screenplay by Ashcroft and Eli Kent nicely fills in those gaps, suggesting a root behind the privileges that Crealy seems to enjoy, and a suggestion of how the facility would no doubt face extreme scrutiny if his abuses ever came to light. We’re forced to wonder just how much of his actions are actually known to those who work there, but willfully overlooked by an organization more concerned about protecting its reputation and profitability than its supposed mission to provide for its residents. The Rule of Jenny Pen takes an unsurprisingly cynical opinion of how much empathy even the staff of this place have for their charges.

Regardless, the perhaps exaggerated apathy of the nursing home staff simply sets the stage for the titanic power struggle between Rush and Lithgow, which is what we’re all here to see. This aspect delivers, even when for long stretches it largely amounts to Lithgow looming and leering, characters staring at each other with murder in their eyes across the expanse of a dining room or exercise yard. Crealy possesses almost all of the power in the duality, but Stefan’s posh pride is remarkably difficult to break–even as it becomes clear he’s mentally slipping as well following the stroke–and he refuses on principle to debase himself by kowtowing to the dictator. This in turn only challenges Crealy to step up and broaden his antagonism–will Stefan stand by his pride when Crealy threatens to torture Stefan’s seemingly defenseless roommate instead? Will he humble himself even for the sake of sparing someone else more pain? Who is really more heartless here? The mania that each inspires in the other makes an outcome of mutually assured destruction begin to feel inevitable.

Visually, Ashcroft and DP Matt Henley layer The Rule of Jenny Pen with contrasts that highlight the disgust, lack of agency and dehumanizing aspects of a facility that is meant to promote dignity but instead erodes it. Sallow yellows, sickly greens and weakly ineffectual fluorescent lighting that fails to drive back the shadows collide with the warmer tones, representing internalized conflict for the soul of this place. The nursing home’s intended state as a welcoming, homey community is rudely contrasted with the antiseptic tones of a medical establishment looking past abuse and the rotting spiritual decay of the residents who are living in fear of a madman they’ve all agreed they’re powerless to stop. As Stefan’s own decay progresses, the film is increasingly lensed in more abstract ways that play with distance and perspective, making hallways and rooms seem unnaturally vast and empty, touchstones of liminal horror. The distances between humans and their empathy only increases as the rot is left to fester. Only by cutting out the cancer will the place be able to occasionally resemble what it is meant to be, elements that are all evoked with effective visuals, although the surrealistic dream/hallucination sequences can be a bit on the nose in terms of how they repeatedly jam the Jenny Pen doll into the proceedings. The film is at its best when simply allowing the personalities of Rush and Lithgow to batter each other.

There will be some viewers who assess The Rule of Jenny Pen as overwrought, condemning Lithgow’s performance for its hamminess and lack of restraint, or a lack of characterization as to why Crealy is the way he is. But the film doesn’t cry out for a more convoluted backstory for its villain, some balm to justify his crusade against the world. He doesn’t need a directly stated philosophy. Some people’s bitterness just overflows, and their only brief succor is to leave everyone around them feeling a bit worse than they did before. Crealy hurts people because he’s a man who feels he’s been denied an ability to directly affect the world around him, and he’ll take this opportunity to do it now, even if it’s in the form of causing nothing but pain. And Lithgow’s inspired derangement–at times even pitiable in its wretchedness–sells us on the utter necessity of seeing this bully dethroned, even if it costs Stefan and any potential allies dearly in order to do so.

The Rule of Jenny Pen is an impressive success for Ashcroft both as a visual artist and director of actors, blessed though he no doubt was by having access to the talents of two world-class performers. When seeing a film with this logline, you expect the dramatic heavy hitters to give you their best, but it’s no less satisfying when they meet your expectations. Reliably creepy and enthrallingly performed, it’s hard to resist the sway of Jenny Pen.

Director: James Ashcroft
Writers: Eli Kent, James Ashcroft
Stars: Geoffrey Rush, John Lithgow, George Henare
Release date: March 7, 2025 (Shudder)

Jim Vorel is Paste’s Movies editor and resident genre geek. You can follow him on Twitter or on Bluesky for more film writing.