John Lithgow and Geoffrey Rush's twisted chiller is a much-needed shake-up to the horror genre, disrupting harmful elderly stereotypes embraced by the likes of X and The Shining

Women and children have often been at the forefront of genre movies, largely because they're perceived by society as more vulnerable than their male or adult counterparts. So when the blood hits the fan, and they rise up to face whatever threat they're up against (be it ghosts, monsters, or serial killers), it's all the more impactful. New psychological thriller The Rule of Jenny Pen takes things one step further, then, by centering itself around the Western world's most powerless and ignored: the elderly – and boy, does it make for a chilling 103 minutes. Think The Father meets One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, with a big ol' dollop of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and you'll have some idea as to what's in store.

Inspired by Owen Marshall's short story, the film follows New Zealand-based judge Stefan Mortensen (Geoffrey Rush), who's moved into an assisted living facility after suffering a near-fatal stroke. Partially paralyzed, Stefan is resigned to a wheelchair – though his mind is as keen as ever, and the day-to-day activities at Royal Pine Mews bore him to tears. He's bunked with Tony, a retired rugby legend who likes talking fondly about his grandkids and Tom Clancy novels, subjects for which lonely, academic Stefan doesn't even try to disguise his disdain. The obnoxiously upbeat sing-a-longs make him squirm in his seat, as does the soup dribbling down his fellow residents' chins, the mortifying wash-downs, and one senior's confused mutterings about her family coming to collect her for Christmas when it's only October.

It won't be long until he recovers and gets out of there, he vows – and 'soon' can't come soon enough. But despite his immediate discomfort, it's not until Stefan crosses paths with puppet-wielding patient Dave Crealy (John Lithgow), who's supposedly living with dementia, that his nightmare truly begins. If you omit the fact that he witnesses a man get burned alive after dropping a lit cigarette on himself just a few days into his stay (a quick, effective way for director James Ashcroft to establish themes of abandonment and neglect), that is…

Stranger than fiction

First, Stefan spots Crealy peeping through the crack in his bedroom door one night. The next? Crealy sneaks in and assaults Stefan's incapacitated roommate. Among other things, Crealy shoves Jenny Pen, his menacing marionette, into Tony's face and lifts up her raggedy dress to expose his wrist, urging Tony to lick "Jenny's arsehole" as a contemptuous Stefan looks on. Naturally, the septuagenarian reports what happened to the orderlies the next morning, but they quickly suggest he's not thinking clearly due to the stress of being in a new place. While the circumstances are a little extreme (we can't imagine there are many 70-somethings terrorizing their peers, insisting they pledge allegiance to an eyeless doll), it's terrifying to see Stefan so swiftly dismissed. How often are the troubles and concerns of people who have lost all agency written off as babbled nonsense behind the closed doors of a nursing home? It doesn't bear thinking about.

Following a lengthy six-year inquiry back in November 2024, New Zealand's Prime Minister Christopher Luxon issued a formal apology to the 200,000 children and vulnerable adults discovered to have suffered abuse – many of whom identified as Māori or Aboriginal – while in state and faith-based care between 1950 and 2019. "It was horrific. It was heartbreaking. It was wrong. And it should never have happened," Luxon stated, as he announced plans to reform the system. "For many of you it changed the course of your life, and for that, the government must take responsibility," he continued, admitting that, for the majority of those affected, his team's promises to make good has come devastatingly too late.

While I don't want to spoil too much here, Stefan's run-ins with Crealy, which escalate to a truly unhinged level, take a real physical toll on the magistrate, threatening both his mental and physical capabilities – captured creatively on screen by harsh, disorientating edits and whiplash-inducing tonal shifts. It's a common trope in scary movies for a script to incapacitate a protagonist but Ashcroft, who wrote the film with Eli Kent, seems to be making more of a point here about aging and the inevitability of our bodies ultimately letting us down. It's moving to see someone who's already been written off by society fight to prove otherwise. It adds a more grounded, melancholic undercurrent to the campier aspects of the movie, such as Stefan's scathing zingers, a couple of bizarre 'Knees Up Mother Brown' needle drops, and Lithgow's wild-eyed work.

That's the way to do it

Lithgow sheds every inch of his likeability here, donning fake, tombstone-esque teeth and icy blue contact lenses to fully transform into the depraved tormentor. At 6'4", he towers over the permanently seated Geoffrey Rush, making him all the more menacing, as do his manic movements when he thinks no one is watching. Compare it to his previous outing, the Oscar-winning Conclave, where he offered up such a stoic, still performance, and you can hardly comprehend it's the same actor.

Even in a role meant to highlight the frailty of senior citizens, Rush brings the same strength and wicked charisma to Stefan that he did to Captain Barbossa across the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Stefan isn't really a nice guy to be around, and yet you can't help but root for him. In horror, old people are often villainized – be it in films like X or The Visit, where they're explicitly antagonistic and often motivated by jealousy over their victims' youth, or in cases like The Shining, where their bodies are used for gross-out, shock value. In recent years, it's only really Natalie Erika James's heartbreaking Alzheimer's flick Relic that I think managed to explore such issues through a scary lens with some semblance of respect and grace. Until now, anyway…

By positioning his story inside an assisted living facility, Ashcroft deftly avoids his older characters being relegated to questionable stereotypes. Here, both goodie and baddie are of a certain generation, while the story's background is peppered with all shades of folks who might occupy a nursing home. Sure, the film may feature an iconic Annabelle-esque toy that's being used in all the marketing and is center-stage in the title, but you could essentially lift her right out of the narrative and it wouldn't make much difference. It's the (still) living and breathing that actually matter, and it's about time.

The Rule of Jenny Pen is in US cinemas now, and in the UK on March 14. For more on unmissable movies, check out the previous entries of our weekly Big Screen Spotlight series.