THE RULE OF JENNY PEN

Name: THE RULE OF JENNY PEN
Item: THE RULE OF JENNY PEN
Author: Review

"Making Nursing Homes Scarier Than Ever"

Family Content: -2 Extreme caution for older teenagers and adults.

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

Credits →

What You Need To Know:

THE RULE OF JENNY PEN is an arty horror/thriller movie. The story centers on a physical and psychological battle royale between a man named Dave who terrorizes the people in a nursing home and Stefan, a new resident suffering the effects of a recent stroke. Dave’s antics include fits of maniacal laughter and multiple acts of casual cruelty. He reserves his most scary attacks for nighttime, when he sneaks into other people’s rooms to terrify and even torture them. Dave has a scary hand puppet he calls Jenny Pen and forces the residents to answer, “Jenny Pen” when he asks them “Who rules?” However, Stefan decides to end Dave’s reign of terror.

THE RULE OF JENNY PEN is nearly flawless as a psychological horror movie and provides a gripping two hours of atmospheric fear. John Lithgow and Geoffrey Rush deliver brilliant performances as the antagonists. The script and direction keeps viewers riveted. The hero risks his life to save himself and others. However, THE RULE OF JENNY PEN contains enough scary, upsetting, violent, and obscene content to warrant extreme caution.

Content:

(C, B, LL, VVV, SS, N, A, D, MM):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Light Christian, redemptive, moral worldview where stroke-afflicted older man placed in nursing home eventually risks his life to save himself and others from another older man who cruelly bullies everyone around, including the attendants, but it comes down to a life or death situation, so the ending is a bit despairing, and the movie is sometimes sad;

Foul Language:

11 obscenities (including two “f” words and several with crude sexual implications);

Violence:

Very strong violence in one scene when lots of blood pours out during a nightmare and lots of strong, terrifying psychological abuse and implied but disturbing violence that is mostly bloodless, a man spits big gobs of sputum in another man’s face three times, it’s implied that a man is harshly pulling on another man’s catheter and causing him to writhe in agony while also striking the man hard repeatedly on his injured hip, man leads a dementia-addled woman out into the woods in the middle of the night and leaves her to fend for herself, her corpse is next seen face down in muddy water, a man empties the asthma inhalers of another man leaving him gasping for life, a man repeatedly kicks another man in the shins with great force, a man starts to forcibly undress a helpless elderly woman but is stopped with force; two men smother and choke a man to death, man accidentally sets fire to himself, character falls onto floor when his wheelchair tips over, and villain and his reign of terror can only be stopped by killing him;

Sex:

Strong sexual reference when villain crudely orders people at least three times to lick his arm where he’s placed a female puppet and villain starts to attempt to disrobe and sexually assault a helpless elderly woman, but he’s forcibly stopped;

Nudity:

Three shower scenes feature rear male nudity;

Alcohol Use:

A broken old man is shown swigging an alcohol bottle but it’s shown unfavorably;

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

A man is shown smoking, but he coughs horribly; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

Strong miscellaneous immorality such as villain tries to frame the hero as a thief, and villain lies and engages in psychological abuse and cruel taunts against other, more helpless elderly people in a senior citizens home, plus the villain’s ultimate nemesis at first treats other people with disdain.

More Detail:

It’s a sad fact that nearly everyone has heard horror stories about the sad state of living in a rest home. However, the new horror/thriller THE RULE OF JENNY PEN will make viewers really pray their families will never leave them in one. The movie is centered on a physical and psychological battle royale between Oscar-winning actor Geoffrey Rush (SHINE) and two-time Oscar nominee John Lithgow. It’s a tautly written and directed movie that makes an indelibly disturbing impression, but there are some concerns.

Rush plays a harsh courtroom judge in New Zealand named Stefan Mortensen. Stefan suffers a stroke mid-trial and is whisked away to an assisted-living facility for long-term therapy. He has an attitude of superiority that makes him act brusquely to his fellow residents, but he notices a particularly strange man named Dave Crealy (Lithgow), who stares darkly at him.

Dave seems to hold a dark power over the community. His antics include fits of maniacal laughter that drive people out of the TV room and multiple acts of casual cruelty to others such as stepping on the feet of people and pushing them on the dance floor or grabbing the food of people too mentally addled to fight back.

Stefan finally yells at Dave in an attempt to shame him for his behavior, but the facility’s staff scolds Stefan rather than the nefarious Dave. In fact, Dave seems to get away with a multitude of bad behaviors. Stefan eventually comes to figure out why when he finds old photographs that reveal Dave had been a staff member in the community for decades, likely terrorizing residents throughout his employment.

However, Dave’s most terrifying antics occur at night when the staff has gone. He spends each night wandering the halls and sneaking into others’ rooms to terrify and even torture them, even pulling hard on one man’s catheter tube as he writhes in agony. Making things even stranger, his nighttime wanderings find him always wearing a plastic baby-doll puppet he calls Jenny Pen. Dave wields Jenny as a form of control and terror. He humiliates people by forcing them to say that Jenny Pen rules their lives and forcing them to engage in a particularly vile form of tribute to Jenny.

Stefan sees Dave leading a dementia-plagued lady outside the gates and leaving her to be lost in the woods in the dead of night. He decides enough is enough and sets out to defeat Dave.

THE RULE OF JENNY PEN is sometimes difficult to watch due to Dave’s terrorizing ways, but Director/Co-Writer James Ashcroft handles the horrors with discretion. He guides his dynamic duo of Rush and Lithgow to an acting tour-de-force and has montages that are absolutely remarkable yet sad. As a movie, JENNY PEN is nearly flawless as a psychological horror movie and provides a gripping two hours of atmospheric fear.

The villain in THE RULE OF JENNY PEN is extremely scary, but much of the violence is either largely implied and not shown, or the scenes cut away to leave the worst moments to the viewer’s imagination. The movie also has some scattered foul language, but the obscenities are deployed sparingly rather than inserting an endless stream of dirty words like so many other modern horror movies do. Also, there are three shower scenes showing rear male nudity of its aged stars bathing, and one scene where the villain sexually menaces a helpless old lady but is stopped before he actually does anything. However, three times in the movie, the villain crudely forces people to lick the puppet obscenely.

Ultimately, the movie’s second half shows Stefan risking his life to save himself and others from the wicked elderly villain. However, it’s a life or death struggle, so one of them must die. Happily, it’s not the hero.

THE RULE OF JENNY PEN is a riveting yet sad, disturbing and arty horror movie that builds momentum from the start to its highly dramatic finish. However, it contains enough scary, upsetting, violent, and obscene content to warrant extreme caution.