It is time for horror followers to get to know James Ashcroft. The New Zealand actor turned author/director awed critics in 2021 with Coming Dwelling within the Darkish, a film so scary that it actually knocked me out of my seat. Now, he is again with a classy but elegantly demented follow-up, The Rule of Jenny Pen, a psycho-biddy thriller that pits heralded actors John Lithgow and Geoffrey Rush towards one another in a deranged battle of wills.
Historically, this horror subgenre — which can also be known as hagsploitation and consists of classics like What Ever Occurred to Child Jane? — facilities on an growing older lady who’s so remoted that she’s change into mentally unstable, and a menace to any who crosses her path. This distinctly disturbing subgenre is commonly used to discover the best way growing older girls are disregarded by society, to our peril. Primarily, although growing older and forgotten, these girls nonetheless carry the ability to torment and even kill. It’d even be considered that their petty grievances and gnarly obsessions are what retains them alive. With The Rule of Jenny Pen, Ashcroft locations males in a psycho-biddy state of affairs, reflecting how some horrors of growing older aren’t reserved only for girls.
John Lithgow and Geoffrey Rush reveal their character inspirations for ‘The Rule of Jenny Pen’
This makes for a film that’s in flip manic, eerie, disturbing, and surprising. It is little surprise The Rule of Jenny Pen has been praised by icon of horror Stephen King as “among the finest films I’ve seen.”
The Rule of Jenny Pen hauntingly echoes What Ever Occurred to Child Jane?
John Lithgow as Dave Crealy with Jenny Pen in James Ashcroft’s “The Rule of Jenny Pen.”
Credit score: Stan Alley / An IFC Movies and Shudder Launch.
Academy Award winner Geoffrey Rush stars as Choose Stefan Mortensen, who makes use of his bench not solely to find out justice but additionally to morally reprimand the defendants who come earlier than his snarling gaze. That’s, till a near-fatal stroke forces him right into a retirement house. Partially paralyzed, the choose should use a wheelchair and depend upon the care employees for a few of his extra intimate wants. Whereas he is insistent that is momentary, simply till he can recuperate, a creeping dread suggests there isn’t a escape from his failing physique and this establishment devoted to housing — and hiding away — the previous and infirm.
Notably, Ashcroft paints the retirement facility itself as a cheery place, portrayed in cool pink tones, the place the residents are provided quite a lot of actions from video games to dancing, and the caregivers are devoted and sort, if not all the time receptive. The horror creeps in with the introduction of Dave Crealy, performed two-time Academy Award nominee John Lithgow. A longtime resident of the ability, Crealy is regarded by the caregivers as a jolly eccentric who laughs loudly, likes to sing and dance, and treasures his dolly, an eyeless hand puppet he calls Jenny Pen. However after they’re not wanting, Crealy is a brutal bully, tormenting the opposite residents by means of intimidation, violence, and humiliation. However he might have met his match within the proud Mortensen.
John Lithgow is a terrific terror in The Rule of Jenny Pen.
John Lithgow as Dave Crealy with Jenny Pen in James Ashcroft’s “The Rule of Jenny Pen.”
Credit score: Stan Alley / An IFC Movies and Shudder Launch.
Identified for every thing from third Rock From the Solar to Trial & Error to Conclave, Lithgow has lengthy been an actor who can leap from comedy to drama with out lacking a step. Right here, Lithgow’s pure peak of 6’4″ is brilliantly used to have Crealy tower over Mortensen, who makes use of a wheelchair that he feels showcases his infirmity. In an interview with Mashable, Lithgow, who government produced alongside Rush, shared how he sought out silvery contact lenses and gnarly prosthetic enamel to construct his idea of Crealy, including on a scruffy beard for good measure. The impact is lifelike and unnerving, reworking the beloved performer’s face into one thing simply off of what we have come to know. His smile turns into extra simply menacing, his stare sharper and colder.
Mashable High Tales
When Crealy begins creeping into Mortensen’s room at night time to harass him, he carries an eerie stillness, like a tiger stalking its prey. The distinction between the tall man and the small, battered puppet is unnerving by itself. However Ashcroft amplifies the vitality of malice by slicing by means of his daytime shade palette of pinks with a giallo crimson, punctuated by sharp strains or fast cuts that flip this on a regular basis setting right into a surreal jail. This perturbing posturing is what Crealy results as he abuses his fellow residents, forcing them into embarrassing submission or tugging mercilessly on catheters. But Crealy is at his most scary throughout the day, in plain sight.
There, the place any aide or resident would possibly see, he taunts the choose with a music and dance. The tune itself is a Cockney pub music, “Knees Up Mom Brown.” And Crealy sings it with the keenness that its title would possibly recommend. However Crealy’s focus, as he lifts his knees excessive and sings loudly, is to rub in Mortensen’s face his mobility, his autonomy, his energy. Due to course Mortensen has reported Crealy to the carers, however who might consider such a jovial previous idiot may very well be as merciless as described? This music then turns into about Crealy pouring salt into the injuries he is already inflicted. With a love of cheerful efficiency (and his personal model of “I’ve Written a Letter to Daddy”), Crealy is a mercurial Child Jane Hudson to Mortensen’s Blanche (Joan Crawford), who additionally makes use of a wheelchair in Child Jane. Nevertheless, Mortensen hasn’t been battered down by many years of abuse and guilt, and so will struggle again in his personal means. And the outcomes are sensational and scary.
The Rule of Jenny Pen unblinklingly reveals the indignities of growing older.
Nick Blake as Tobias in “The Rule of Jenny Pen.”
Credit score: Stan Alley / An IFC Movies and Shudder Launch.
The titular puppet is suitably creepy. The person who wields her like a weapon is enchantingly horrifying. However essentially the most penetrating terror of The Rule of Jenny Pen is that Crealy’s marketing campaign of abuse can exist in any respect. Within the opening scene, Mortensen is offered as a person infallible, with the ability of privilege, respect, and standing. However one stroke and he’s struck down, shedding his autonomy due to his incapacity. Greater than that, he loses his voice due to the agism that urges society to disregard the aged.
Mortensen is ignored just like the pleas for love or consideration of any psycho-biddy. His claims about Crealy written off with a banal smile from a caregiver extra decided to wash him up than hear him out. Determined to not lose himself to this wall of ignorance, Mortensen does battle together with his bully. However like Coming Dwelling within the Darkish, Ashcroft units up a narrative that may haven’t any pleased ending. For there isn’t a escape from the decay growing older brings, not solely psychically but additionally psychologically and — maybe most crucially — socially.
Like in What Ever Occurred to Child Jane? somebody will lose this battle of wills, however nobody will win. And in that, The Rule of Jenny Pen leaves us with a harrowing remaining picture, easy but unforgettable. In the long run, The Rule of Jenny Pen turns into not only a scary warning but additionally a haunting name for empathy — a memento mori of kinds, reminding the viewer, “As I’m, you may be.”
The Rule of Jenny Pen is now streaming on Shudder.
UPDATE: Mar. 26, 2025, 9:37 a.m. The Rule of Jenny Pen was reviewed for its theatrical launch on March 7, 2025. The article has been up to date to replicate the newest streaming choices.
