The Rule of Jenny Pen Review

The Rule of Jenny Pen begins streaming on Shudder Friday, March 28.

The grueling but entertaining psychological thriller The Rule of Jenny Pen introduces one of the strangest movie villains you’ll ever meet: Jenny Pen, a baby doll puppet with tiny plastic hands and a bulbous head. The puppet’s eyes are long gone, so any light in the room tends to shine through the open sockets, giving them a disconcertingly eerie glow; her M.O. is one of mental and physical torture, a battery of distressing taunts aimed at the vulnerable residents of a New Zealand nursing home. But this is no Child’s Play or M3GAN situation. Jenny carries out the petulant whims of her owner, played by John Lithgow in a formidable portrayal whose bullying energy could only be matched and countered by similarly seasoned pros Geoffrey Rush and George Henare.

The Rule of Jenny Pen is adapted from a short story by Owen Marshall, a New Zealander who specializes in antagonists like Dave Crealy (Lithgow): people who are so intensely aggressive that they can easily manipulate the meek. In this particular story, Dave meets a worthy adversary: Stefan Mortensen (Rush), an imperious judge who arrives at the home after suffering a stroke, and makes it his mission to expose this monster who stalks the halls at night, ending each intrusion into his neighbors’ rooms with the unsettling inquiry “Who rules?” The problem is that in the daylight hours, Dave comes across as a sweetly addled eccentric, beloved by the staff. And Stefan? He is one prickly pear. Throughout the movie, Stefan struggles to get anyone to believe that Dave and Jenny are trouble, mainly because, as written and performed, Stefan is so rude to everyone, all of the time.

Stefan isn’t easy to root for. When we first meet him, he’s sitting at the front of his courtroom, blaming the parents of a sexual-assault victim for not taking better care of their child. Later, at the nursing home, he complains about having to share a room with Tony Garfield (Henare): a former rugby star, a hero to his fellow Maori and a New Zealand national treasure. It’s a credit to Rush that even though Stefan can be demanding and petty, he also comes across as heroic in his own way, standing up for simple human dignity. Henare is also outstanding, projecting a genuine sweetness and inner strength in the face of Dave’s relentless cruelty.

Stefan and Tony eventually bond over the mutual hatred of Dave, who resents Tony for being popular and singles him out for discipline at Jenny Pen’s wee hands. When Dave comes into Stefan and Tony’s room after dark, he tells racist jokes in the puppet’s voice, and then yanks on Tony’s catheter. Because both Stefan and Tony have physical ailments that make it hard for them to get away, they’re trapped with this madman and his devil-doll – and we’re trapped along with them. These scenes are intense and disturbing, but effective. They make the movie scarier and the situation feel more hopeless.

Dave and Jenny’s reign of terror takes on more or less the same form, day after day, and because of this, The Rule of Jenny Pen can get a little repetitive. Director James Ashcroft (who co-wrote the screenplay with Eli Kent) emphasizes the banal irritations of an institution, in ways that spread some of that discomfort to us. A scene like the one where an entertainer in a hideously grinning mask sings the insipid ditty “I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts” is meant to be grating – and it certainly is.

But Lithgow, Rush, and Henare are consistently exciting to watch, as their three old men scheme against and sabotage each other. There’s a darkly comic undercurrent to this movie, evident in the gusto of these performances – and also running beneath all the creepy shots of Jenny Pen, who looms large in the frame, with a blank expression that is equal parts ominous and hilarious.

More importantly, Ashcroft does a terrific job of capturing the frustrations of a man like Stefan, who was used to bossing people around, right up until the moment when his brain went haywire. The director follows in the footsteps of Australian and New Zealand filmmakers like George Miller and Peter Jackson, who take the exciting parts of the action, fantasy and horror genres – all the fights, chases, murders, intimidation, and wonder – and put them into movies about underdogs fighting for some kind of personal freedom. Stefan has no family to come visit, and his condition keeps deteriorating; but he’ll be damned if some dumb puppet is going to get the better of him. Stefan may not be the hero we want in the darkest of times, but he could well be the one who is obnoxious enough to see justice done.