The Rule of Jenny Pen (2024) review – At least John Lithgow’s having fun

When it was acquired by horror streaming behemoth Shudder after its festival debut in 2024, things were looking up for The Rule of Jenny Pen. Starring powerhouse thespians Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow as two warring residents of a care home, all the signs were good. Seasoned cast? Check. Festival buzz? Check. Sadly, the film is much less than the sum of its parts, mostly due to a sleepy script that never gets out of first gear.

Produced and set in New Zealand, The Rule of Jenny Pen follows Stefan (Rush), a well-established judge who, following a stroke, is admitted to a residential home for the elderly. Here, he encounters Dave (an electric Lithgow), a fellow resident seemingly hell-bent on making his life hell. On his hand sits Jenny Pen, a hollowed-out children’s doll who acts as a vessel for all these heinous acts, striking fear into Stefan’s fragile mental state. From groping other residents to even causing a few deaths, Stefan decides to put a stop to Dave’s torment.

Naturally, a premise such as this gives rise to a few fairly understandable questions. Initially, the presence of Dave and Jenny Pen are purposefully ambiguous. We see them floating around in the background, Dave cackling to himself as he watches television or maniacally dances. But just as you may become curious as to what link the two have to the strange goings-on at the home, The Rule of Jenny Pen dispels with all the intrigue it spends its first 15 minutes creating.

It results in a remaining 90 minutes without any jeopardy at all – minutes that also fail to answer the most interesting question of all: why is Dave so hell-bent on making Stefan’s life a misery? There’s one singular line of dialogue alluding to some envious motivations, but other than that the screenplay doesn’t elaborate on this character beyond the energy and undeniable watchability Lithgow imbues the role with.

We never understand exactly why he’s so beholden to this battered children’s doll, or if it truly poses any kind of supernatural threat – or indeed, why he feels the need to torment other residents aside from Stefan. You can tell it’s based on a short story instead of a novel, because there’s very little character work here to flesh out the main players.

In fact, the screenplay of The Rule of Jenny Pen is so slight that several scenes often roll into one another without any dialogue whatsoever. It gives the film an incredibly sleepy presence, whereas it should consistently boil to a fever pitch resulting in some meaningful, no-holds-barred interaction between the two warring leads. This simply never comes to fruition, making it a film lacking in any stakes or reason to buy into these characters who are so thinly sketched, despite their performers’ best intentions.

There are flashes of excellence here: Lithgow is scintillating and clearly having so much fun, there’s an interesting portrayal of mental decay reminiscent of Anthony Hopkins in The Father, and Rush’s performance is one peppered with vulnerability, even if his characterisation ultimately falls to the wayside in the final act.

These elements are just drained out by a script that doesn’t want to probe its characters – or their actions – any further. It’s hard to categorise The Rule of Jenny Pen into one clear-cut genre, because while it wants to take the Chucky and Annabelle approach of having a creepy, seemingly autonomous doll in the action, it holds back massively on its menace and doesn’t lean into the depravity of Dave’s torment beyond one or two genuinely compelling moments. But it’s not a rivalry-based drama like The Favourite either, because it doesn’t flesh out its characters enough to get the audience invested.

The Rule of Jenny Pen is therefore a hypothesis without an argument, a thriller without thrills, and a horror without scares. As much as its leads try to work with it, the material on offer is just too shallow and unwilling to interrogate itself. The result is a film that after a promising start, plods along sleepily to a pithy conclusion.

★★

The Rule of Jenny Pen releases in UK cinemas on March 14, 2025 from Vertigo Releasing.