The Rule of Jenny Pen: A Nursing Home Spy vs. Spy with John Lithgow and Geoffrey Rush

THE RULE OF JENNY PEN 

(James Ashcroft, New Zealand, 2025, 103 minutes) 

As any self-respecting Brian De Palma fan will tell you, this isn't the first time John Lithgow (Blow Out, Raising Cain), with his mild-mannered features, has played a bad guy. 

In fact, he did so last year in Edward Berger's Oscar-nominated papal thriller Conclave. It's just that he also excels at playing good guys--as any self-respecting 3rd Rock from the Sun fan, like me, will happily attest. 

So it's no surprise that he plays a villain in James Ashcroft's The Rule of Jenny Pen, the New Zealand filmmaker's follow-up to 2021's SUV-invasion thriller Coming Home in the Dark, which he also adapted from a short story by New Zealand writer Owen Marshall. The surprise instead revolves around the efforts of Geoffrey Rush's nursing home colleague to bring him down. The question isn't so much will he or won't he, but how will he do it? 

Before suffering a stroke, Rush's Stefan Mortensen served as a judge. Afterward, he ends up in an assisted living facility, which he navigates by way of a motorized wheelchair, though he has some ability to talk and to move about, and believes he'll be able to leave once he fully recovers. 

Fortunately, Royal Pine Mews is quite pleasant as these things go—filming took place at the Wairakei Resort in Taupō--though Stefan witnesses a horrific accident shortly after arriving, and since this is a psychological thriller, it sets the tone as much as a prologue in which he rants hostilely from the judge's bench before collapsing, but when attendants aren't around to assist the residents at the facility: bad things can happen. And they most certainly will.

 

Ashcroft suggests that Stefan was always impatient and condescending, but present circumstances haven't softened his mien in the slightest. The other residents, many of whom have fewer cognitive abilities, get on Stefan's nerves—Lithgow's Dave Crealy above all, who laughs wildly at anything on the communal TV, stares menacingly at Stefan whenever het gets the chance, and won't go anywhere without his "dementia doll" Jenny Pen (an eyeless baby doll puppet). He turns especially surly if anyone tries to take it from him, but otherwise presents as a harmless, if addled senior citizen. 

When my mom, who was diagnosed with dementia in 2019, moved to assisted living, she also considered her fellow residents inferior, because they were slow-moving humans with whom she couldn't hold a real conversation. Six years have passed since then, and now she fits right in, since everyone is off in their own world. I found Stefan relatable. 

Dave is something different. He acts one way in public and another in private. 

When the attendants aren't around, he's cruel to the other residents in ways that go beyond Stefan's eye rolls and dismissive comments, but when the judge lodges a complaint, no one believes him. His roommate, Tony Garfield (George Henare), a former rugby player who has noticed similar behaviors, refuses to back him up, because Stefan has been such a jerk, though it also represents self-sabotage on Tony's stubborn, wounded part. 

It's possible Dave has dementia, since it can take forms more egregious than memory loss, but Stefan believes he's playing a sick game, not least because his victims are so largely defenseless. There are surely more enjoyable ways to spend one's twilight years. With no one to help, Stefan tries to figure things out on his own, and he uncovers some odd, Stanley Kubrick-like clues, not least because they're hiding in plain sight, but in a series of objects to which no one appears to have taken a closer look.

In the meantime, Dave's reign of irritation includes spit, urine, weird voices, racist jokes, and cruel tricks. "You do really seem absent of any positive attributes," notes Stefan drily, though Tony, a member of the Māori tribe, bears the brunt of Dave's painful and humiliating wrath. Gradually, his schoolyard bully antics escalate into something even more nefarious, and so Stefan ramps up his makeshift investigation. Along the way, he comes up with a way to make the asthmatic Dave pay for his evil deeds.

It's a clever plan, except the way Stefan keeps blacking out makes him uniquely vulnerable to Dave's retaliatory measures. 

I'm not completely certain if the blackouts are due to stroke, dementia, or surreptitious drugging, but one minute, Stefan is in one place, and the next, he's in another. Did Dave move him, did he lose track of time--both? Stefan also has strange dreams involving Dave and Jenny, and it's increasingly unclear what's really happening and what Stefan imagines happening, especially since Dave does all of his dirtiest deeds in the dead of night.

All the while, a small calico cat named Pluto (played by Marbles) with a bell on its collar roams the halls and collective spaces, impassively watching the goings on, and stopping for the occasional scritch. Pluto plays no part in the proceedings, but I like the way the cat is always there, presumably thinking, "What fools these mortals be" or, more likely, "I could use a snack."

Having now seen both of Ashcroft's features, I was struck by the differences and similarities, since one film takes place on Wellington's backroads at night and the other takes place at a well-lit institution. There are other differences, as well, especially the disparate ages of the characters, but in both cases, deadly situations that at first seem random turn out to have some history behind them. I'm not sure the explanation for Dave's callous disregard makes as much sense as it should, whereas the explanation for Mandrake's explosive rage in the first film possibly makes too much. 

As for the acting by these award-winning gents--more internationally-recognizable than the cast of talented locals in Coming Home in the Dark--I found George Henare's low-key performance a tad more compelling than those of John Lithgow and Geoffrey Rush in go-for-broke mode.

If anything, The Rule of Jenny Pen flirts with the kind of enjoyable silly menace of Richard Attenborough's 1978 ventriloquist dummy horror Magic whenever Dave and the doll go to town--singing, dancing, the whole bit. 

Henare plays a more reserved, but no less dedicated character, and it's especially satisfying to see him finally rise to the occasion at the end. And I'm happy to report that Pluto lives on to roam the halls with abandon. 

The Rule of Jenny Pen opens in theaters on Fri, Mar 7, and will be coming to Shudder later this year. Coming Home in the Dark appears on a number of streaming services. It's well worth a watch, especially if you enjoy the work of American independents Jeremy Saulnier and Jim Mickle. Images from the IMDb (John Lithgow and friend), First Showing (Geoffrey Rush), Entertainment Weekly (Lithgow), YouTube (George Henare and a quote from Stephen King), and Cinemablend (Lithgow getting down with his bad self).