Some fright movies send you leaping. Others dig deep beneath your skin, knot your nerves, and won’t unravel. The Rule of Jenny Pen falls squarely into that second category, a movie that doesn’t merely scare but haunts, making the gradual disintegration of aging and the cruelty of abandonment its greatest monsters.
When The Rule of Jenny Pen had its world premiere at Fantastic Fest, it was the most sought-after film among horror fans. And if Stephen King declares a film “one of the best movies I’ve seen this year,” you can be sure that it’s no ordinary scare-fest. This is not a movie about jump scares; this is about terror, control, and the gradual disintegration of human dignity.
Forget spooky mansions or ghostly children, this horror takes place in Royale Pine Mews, a failing New Zealand retirement home that’s more like a purgatory than a home. Geoffrey Rush plays Stefan Mortensen, a former forceful judge now immobilized by a stroke and left to a system that no longer cares about him. His existence takes a turn for the worse as he comes into contact with Dave Crealy, played by John Lithgow, who dominates the night with the assistance of a deformed puppet named Jenny Pen.
Dave is not merely another patient; he’s the facility’s self-appointed dictator. With Jenny Pen as his instrument, he bullies, belittles, and intimidates the other patients. The attendants, oblivious to abuse or reluctant to interfere, attribute the turmoil to dementia-related behavior. What starts as petty cruelty eventually becomes a ruthless struggle for power that obscures the distinction between psychological abuse and actual horror.
Seeing Rush and Lithgow on the same screen is seeing two titans battling it out at close range. Lithgow hands in one of his most terrifying performances, a conflation of camp, madness, and evil glee. His insane sing-along to “Knees Up Mother Brown” is straight-up nightmare material. Rush, for his part, imbues Stefan with a heartbreaking vulnerability, a self-respecting man denied control, struggling to stay alive in a system that has abandoned him. Their chemistry is dynamite, their clash almost unbearable to sit through. No wonder both actors took home Best Actor awards at Sitges.
What is so unsettling about The Rule of Jenny Pen isn’t its violence,ce it’s its candor. The film uses one of the most fundamental terrors of mankind: becoming old and helpless. It doesn’t merely depict elder abuse; it makes you experience it. The loss of autonomy, the erasure, the degradation, it’s all present, unflinchingly dissected. One reviewer likened it to “a horror movie that punishes you for looking away,” and that’s the most apt description so far.
Director James Ashcroft, who co-penned the script with Eli Kent, worked on the project with accuracy and compassion. He’s explained the idea evolved out of one disturbing thought: bullying does not end in childhood; it merely targets new victims. The film shifts the dynamics of a schoolyard to a nursing home, revealing how cruelty evolves but never ceases. Each closed-in shot, each shadowed hallway, each lingering close-up is meant to hold the spectator in the same claustrophobic impotence as the actors.
Ashcroft’s tone hovers on a hair-thin line between gross comedy and raw horror. The surreal scene is the puppet show, the over-the-top laughter hangs on the precipice of absurdity, but never loses its bite. This precarious balance rescues the film from kitsch, turning it instead into what one critic likened to “pulp profundity.” You may shudder, but you can’t turn your eyes away.
With Stephen King’s endorsement echoing across social media, The Rule of Jenny Pen quickly became a must-see for horror fans. Its festival run only cemented that reputation, earning critical acclaim and major acting awards. Critics compared it to Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and Polanski’s The Tenant films that use confinement and decay to explore the darker corners of human psychology. Not everyone could handle it, but nearly everybody concurred: it’s one of the gutsiest horror movies in a long time.
By facing the horror of aging, The Rule of Jenny Pen brings something new to the genre. It’s not ghosts or demons, it’s time, rot, and losing control. It tells us that the most frightening monster isn’t under our bed, it’s waiting for us all in the mirror, someday.
Ultimately, The Rule of Jenny Pen haunts like a bruise. It’s savage, uncompromising, and unforgettable. Rush and Lithgow give performances for the ages in a movie that won’t turn away from the things we don’t want to confront. Love it or fear it, one thing’s for sure: Jenny Pen will linger with you long after the credits stop rolling. The Rule of Jenny Pen isn’t a horror movie; it’s a reflection. It makes us examine the ugliness of aging, the heartlessness of indifference, and the blurred line between concern and domination. It’s not pleasant to see, but that’s precisely why it’s important. Because the true horror isn’t within the puppet, it’s in what it shows us.