The Rule of Jenny Pen (New Zealand 2024: Dir James Ashcroft)

Ashcroft's debut feature, 2021's visceral Coming Home in the Dark was a bleak thriller rooted in abuse within a boys' reform school in rural New Zealand. That movie was based on a short story written by Owen Marshall, and Ashcroft returns to Marshall's work as source material for his latest film, which also features an institution; in this case a nursing home.

Geoffrey Rush plays Stefan Mortensen, a judge who, when we first meet him, suffers a massive stroke while in court and is admitted, unable to walk, to the Royal Pine Mews Care Home. He thinks he's a paying guest just spending a few weeks until he's back on his feet (pardon the pun) but one look at his condition, and that of his fellow 'guests', strongly suggests that this is his last accommodation.

As a judge Mortensen was used to wielding power and morality (his opening sentencing of a serial paedophile extended to holding the guy's mother equally culpable). At the care home that power is removed; he's just another patient. But surveying the residents (whose number includes one - slightly cliched - woman with dementia, hoping for a visit, and rescue, from a family that haven't visited her in years) he espies an ostensibly robust figure in the shape of Dave Crealy (John Lithgow); employee turned home resident, his hand permanently attached to a dementia doll, Jenny Pen, which Crealy uses, in an ironic twist, to mete out justice within the care home.

Crealy's freedom of the establishment (he retains his all access passkey) and the seeming inability of the staff to do anything about his more outré behaviour - their reasoning being that, like all the residents he pays for his care and is thus immune from censure - recalls memories of Jimmy Sa*ile, and indeed Lithgow is so unctuous, nasty and, well, pernicious, that this comparison isn't far off the mark. Only Mortensen seems able to see through Crealy's plan for dominance via the judgements of Jenny Pen, but it's his word against the authorities.

The Rule of Jenny Pen is, make no mistake, a difficult watch. Anyone with any experience of visiting residential homes will feel that Ashcroft's created atmosphere of sadness and approaching death is perfectly captured. But beyond this the war between Crealy and Mortensen has elements of the darkest wit, with some unexpectedly surreal touches; Lithgow and Rush are, of course, perfectly cast, the former at times truly frightening. "I hope I die before I get old," sang The Who's Roger Daltrey (in his youth) and watching The Rule of Jenny Pen you'll feel the same way.  

The Rule of Jenny Pen plays in UK and Ireland cinemas 14 March 2025, from Vertigo Releasing.