The Rule Of Jenny Pen review – a stand-out ageing horror

We are a society obsessed with ageing, whether it’s the morality placed on those celebs ageing gracefully, or the many many films that today try to discuss the ageing actors’ place in Hollywood (The Substance, The Last Showgirl, Babygirl). But while ageing is often a point of abjection, where sagging tits and hyperbolically sagging skin come into contact with supple young flesh, The Rule of Jenny Pen avoids the hagsploitation clichés that still dominate horror.

When Stefan (Geoffrey Rush) suffers from a severe stroke, his life is drastically changed. No longer are his days filled with proceedings at the city court where he ruled as a judge – his now limited mobility and declining cognitive function forces him into a group care home, where someone else presides over the residents. Jenny Pen, or more specifically the maniacally cackling Dave Crealy (John Lithgow), whose hand is forever shoved up the aforementioned scraggly puppet with a doll’s head, rules the roost with menace. He tells offensive jokes, steps on toes, and even tugs at the medical tubing attached to people’s bodies. The Rule of Jenny Pen offers a horrifying hypothetical: what if your final years were spent trapped with a racist bully?

This is unfortunately the reality for many older people, as nursing homes and retirement villages don’t vet their residents due to their voting history or offer personality tests to insure harmonious living. Many of us, currently limited to the echo chambers of our online lives, will eventually be forced to eat breakfast with Reform voters and Baldoni defenders. Old age is the universal equaliser. Not only can you not determine your fellow inhabitants, but – as Stefan quickly discovers while adjusting to the well-meaning but condescending  staff and the mushy food – you cannot control your environment at all.

Alongside the many horrors inflicted by Dave and the destabilizing scenes where Stefan’s decreasing brain function causes him to hallucinate in the never-ending hallways, much of James Ashcroft’s background setting focuses on the sounds coming from fellow residents, TVs, radios and alarms. Creating over stimulating nightmares for those who have recently had their independence snatched from them. Peace is an impossible goal in low income retirement facilities and the separation between private and public life has been erased. It is this inevitable truth of Stefan’s new reality that makes The Rule of Jenny Pen stand out among the many depictions of ageing in cinema.

Of course this is not just any perilously understaffed retirement home, because of Jenny Pen and Dave Crealy’s tyrannical rule. Less is more in this residential horror and by limiting the effects around the doll to a few physical moments of change, John Lithgow becomes the dominating terror. As the psychopathic ruler who in his old age has finally found his purpose terrorising old people, the glee Lithgow brings to this murderous character adds to his menace. Lithgow is equally matched by Geoffrey Rush, the guffawing self-serious judge who is brought low by his assailant, making the Rule of Jenny Pen, feel like today’s Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? as the ageing actors of equal talent are confined to their home battling it out for the right to age and outshine one another, with much more piss and way less glamour.