‘The Rule of Jenny Pen’ Fantastic Fest 2024 Review: A Fascinating But Repetitive Look At The Horrors of Aging
Unsettling but inert, director James Ashcroft’s The Rule of Jenny Pen is well-meaning in how it roots its genre thrills in the real-life horror of elder abuse, but its narrative momentum never escalates with the same urgency with which it probes those themes. Yet even when the film is spinning its proverbial wheels by its end, it’s worth viewing purely to see its two central actors, Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow, battle each other with aplomb and reckless abandon. The two men turn in some of their finest work here, spinning a seemingly petty conflict between a former judge and a longstanding assisted living patient into a warning of the cruelty people enact out of spite and regret when they haven’t lived up to their full potential.
Even before Rush and Lithgow go head-to-head, Ashcroft’s script (co-written with Eli Kent and Owen Marshall) has much to say about how society infantilizes the elderly rather than being present with them as they age. Rush plays Judge Stefan Mortensen who is in the middle of court before he collapses due to a stroke. Having lost most of his motor functions, he’s whisked away to Royale Pine Mews, an assisted living center.
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Stefan’s grappling with the reality that his body is withering away (with his mind not too far behind) is the least of his problems though once Lithgow’s John Crealy, a fellow patient, sets his crosshairs on the former judge. Wielding a hand puppet (the titular Jenny Pen), Crealy takes macabre glee in tormenting and abusing the other residents without consequence. Despite Stefan’s protests to the center’s staff, his frustrations go unaddressed, mainly due to Crealy’s longstanding history at the center (and Stefan’s own misanthropic behavior).
A majority of the film’s thrills don’t oscillate beyond Crealy terrorizing the other men and women in his facility, which can be captivating if punishing to watch. Lithgow gets to let his freak flag fly, and there’s a manic glee to how he finds new ways to prey on those most vulnerable; by the standards of the other bedridden patients he has the zeal and energy of someone 20 years younger. He’s able to walk without any cane or wheelchair and prances around of his own accord; there’s something truly sinister in the ways Crealy uses his freedom not to help his fellow patients but to torment them. Every vice is fair game, from fondling those who are bedridden to tampering with people’s urine bags, and Crealy is a character who lives for the carnage he’s able to unleash.
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To Lithgow’s credit though, he manages to lace an intrusive dissatisfaction amidst the mania. We get hints of backstory, but it seems that Crealy is living a life of regret. Royale Pine Mews is his life and there’s a sense that he’s made the assisted living center his small kingdom through which he can try to make an impact in the world, even if that comes in the form of pulling strings and pushing buttons. An emptiness drives his character, one that feels threatened by the presence of a character like Stefan, who on paper, has “made something of his life.” Crealy can boast no such accomplishments and his violence can be seen as a reaction and desire to leave a name lest he fade into obscurity.
Compared to Crealy’s glee, Rush brings a measured gruffness but boasts equally as grounding conviction. It’s seeing Crealy and Mortensen’s fire and water dynamic that makes the film endlessly entertaining. Rush is curmudgeonly, playing Stefan as one who believes he is smarter than the rest of the elderly and for whom the community sing-alongs, bland cafeteria food, and other plebeian activities (he berates a patient who is trying to befriend him for reading Tom Clancy) are beneath him.
There’s a deep sadness and despondency that lurks behind Stefan’s eyes, as if he wants to believe he is better than the conditions around him but has to accept the realities of aging. Rush plays the character expertly, as one who goes through the motions of physical therapy and plays along with the traditions of the center, but ultimately still feels a sense of incredulity that all of his years as a public service have amounted to a life where the most exciting activity of his day is eating a meager serving of ice cream.
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While there Ashcroft admirably draws attention to the realities of dementia and how people seem content to ship off the elderly to facilities like Royale Pine Mews and never think of them again, his own depiction of the residents feels reductive and simplistic in nature. Most if not all of the elderly are sickly and dependent on the staff around them, which feels fairly one-dimensional and not realistic or encompassing the diversity of ways people age.
While the film ultimately doesn’t deviate beyond Stefan annoying Crealy, Crealy taking revenge, and that cycle then repeating, Ashcroft and cinematographer Matt Henley offer up some of the most disquieting images I’ve seen in a film this year, due in large part to the ways they frame Jenny Pen. The jury is still out as to whether it’s the doll that’s haunted or the man wielding her, but it’s hard not to shake that there’s something paranormal about the two’s relationship.
One of the most frightening moments comes when we see Jenny Pen from the POV of the person who is being tormented by her and Crealy. As Lithgow’s arm moves and inches towards the screen, her face becomes larger, till she’s covered the screen and all we see are her dirt-encrusted eyes. It’s an unnerving testimony to the ways horrors in enclosed spaces have a way of being magnified through proximity and how isolation from community can make you go mad.
It’s moments like these that break The Rule of Jenny Pen out of its monotonous and predictable structure, picking away at ideas that will linger long after viewing. For better or worse, it’s a chamber piece that succeeds in making the audience feel trapped just like its central characters.
Summary
For better or worse, ‘The Rule of Jenny Pen’ is a chamber piece that succeeds in making the audience feel trapped just like its central characters.
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