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.