The Rule of Jenny Pen: John Lithgow terrorises the elderly with a glove puppet in this one-note nursing home nasty

Dead-eyed dolls are a horror staple, from ventriloquists haunted by their own dummies (Dead of Night (1945), Magic (1978)), to possessed toys (Annabelle (2014) or your Chucky of choice), through to more hi-tech animatronic versions like M3gan (2022). To give this mean-spirited New Zealand chiller its due, you’ve probably never seen one terrorise care home denizens while attached to John Lithgow’s hand like a sinister glove puppet.

So, no malevolent ghosts or demons at play here. It’s simply that Lithgow’s resident sadist Dave Crealy delights in the various torments he and Jenny Pen, as he calls his dementia doll, inflict on elderly people already largely stripped of their dignity and agency in the Royal Pine Mews. Imagine Crealy’s glee, then, when pompous high court judge Stefan Mortensen (Geoffrey Rush) becomes the home’s latest inmate – sorry, guest – after suffering a very public and humiliating mid-verdict stroke. Wheelchair-bound and partially paralysed, Mortensen makes the perfect foil for Crealy. Mentally, he’s all-too-aware of his surroundings; physically, however, he’s a sitting duck.  

Adapting an Owen Marshall short story, director James Ashcroft aims to blend the harsh realities of abuse and neglect in the care industry with disturbing flashes of the surreal. Despite some creative choices in the latter (at one point a giant, glowing eyed Jenny rises up like a kaiju), the more mundane hostilities hit hardest. Crealy pours urine on a prone Stefan’s pyjama bottoms, knowing full well the overworked staff will simply pity his supposed incontinence and take him even less seriously. 

Bleak and uncompromising is generally a good look for more sombre horror films. But there’s a strange disconnect too, in the mercilessness of Ashcroft’s visuals. Often, he shoots his aging cast in exaggerated close-ups, from unflattering angles, as if the film itself has little regard for its characters, or Crealy himself is somehow steering the entire project. The empathetic, B-movie bravura of Don Coscarelli’s similarly care home-set horror Bubba Ho-Tep (2002) is noticeably absent. 

Rush and Lithgow are clearly committed, one splenetic with frustration and fear, the other thrumming with beady-eyed malevolence. But their duel is largely one-note, shorn of psychological nuance or clashing worldviews. Narrative credulity is stretched to breaking point: despite all the cameras and security, Lithgow’s swiped staff pass seemingly gives him free run of the entire home, 24/7. And what could’ve made, say, a punchy half-hour episode of BBC Two’s Inside No.9 (2014-2024) suffers from a drawn-out denouement, a fate ironically reflecting that of many of the film’s tragic protagonists. Help the aged, indeed. 

► The Rule of Jenny Pen is in UK cinemas now.