2024 Chicago International Film Festival Review: The Rule of Jenny Pen

There are few things cinematically that annoy me more than two great actors being in a terrible film. The Rule of Jenny Pen, which stars Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow, is such a project. While the actors give it their all and give good performances, everything else around them is bad, from the plot to the idiot side characters to the lack of scares in this apparent horror film.

Rush plays Stefan Mortensen, a lonely judge who has a stroke during a trial and is put in a rest home until he can regain his strength. During his stay, Dave Crealy (Lithgow), a fellow elderly patient, uses a child’s puppet named Jenny Pen to abuse Martensen and other patients around the facility with none of the workers noticing. Martensen must find a way to stop him despite his limitations.

The basic idea of John Lithgow and Geoffrey Rush going toe-to-toe in a rest-home horror film sounded good. Two actors who balance over-the-top line readings with gravitas could have been a lot of fun. The thing with The Rule of Jenny Pen is that it isn’t fun at all. It’s a mean-spirited film and one that isn’t scary at all. The movie seems to only care about elder abuse, which happens thanks in large part to the incompetent employees of the rest home. By day, Crealy acts like he mentally isn’t there. He has Jenny Pen on his hand and stares into space blankly, seemingly harmless. At night, he runs rampant around the rest home, not only terrorizing Mortensen, but anyone else he sees on his route. The workers don’t see or hear him, allowing him to get away with whatever he wants, like opening a door to let an aimless patient out in the cold in the middle of the night or going into any patient’s room at will and terrorizing them with Jenny Pen. And even when Mortensen tries to tell an employee what is going on, they ignore him and don’t even investigate the allegations. Does this place not have security cameras? Why are the workers so oblivious? It’s never answered why Crealy is doing what he is doing, which makes everything the movie is doing more frustrating and annoying.

Maybe the true horror of the film is the negligence of rest homes like these. Would I want to put my parents in a home like this, where the workers are bad and the patients are mean? Certainly not. But did I have to watch The Rule of Jenny Pen to come up with this decision? Also, certainly not. The Rule of Jenny Pen is a mean and stupid horror film that wastes the talents of Rush and Lithgow.

The Rule of Jenny Pen played in the After Dark category of the 2024 Chicago International Film Festival.

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