First of all, let me say I DID visit the movie theater only three days ago to watch the new PG-13 horror film, "The Woman in the Yard" which only opened in theaters nationwide on March 28th. While The Woman in the Yard has some interesting visual moments, it borrows far too many ideas from other horror films to be notable. And the thematic ideas it does have can't even fill a full 90 minutes (this film has a run time of 88 minutes including the opening and closing credits). So I'm not going to spend any more time reviewing this film, because I have something much more frightening and fun that I was lucky enough to catch earlier this year in a Salt Lake City theater.
This other film is "The Rule of Jenny Pen" which is no longer in theaters but is now available on select streaming platforms. Geoffrey Rush ("Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales," 2017) stars as an accomplished judge in New Zealand who suffers a stroke in a public courtroom and is sent to a nursing home to work on his recovery. (Half this judge's body is paralyzed after his stroke.) While living at this nursing home, the intelligent condescending judge notices another elderly resident who has all his physical faculties...and might be using them to abuse the more helpless residents in secret. With an incompetent staff of nurses and care givers, and the disguise of a mental handicap (by wearing a plastic puppet on his hand), this wild, energetic man goes unchecked sneaking into residents' rooms, stealing their belongings, and brutally assaulting them...sometimes with deadly results.
This horror film leans unexpectedly into "thriller" territory as the judge resolves to defeat the violent psychopath (played by a menacing John Lithgow, "Conclave," 2024), pitting brawn against brain. "The Rule of Jenny Pen" is adapted from a short story by New Zealand author Owen Marshall who evidently loves exploring the sinister side of human nature. I loved this film more than I ever expected I would. My heart was racing almost the entire time, and I left the theater being strongly reminded that horror has no age limit. And horror doesn't need to include blood and gore to scare viewers effectively.
It isn't every day a film is set in a nursing home and manages to be as riveting as this, so remember this title if you want some believable shocks and spooks. New Zealand director and co-screenwriter James Ashcroft has only directed one other feature-length film before ("Coming Home in the Dark," 2021). But he creates a delicious tension in a tug of war between security and fear...between comfort and disturbance. Nothing supernatural happens in this film. No ghosts or demons pop out of the darkness. The fear in this comes from real life helplessness (something all too relatable to viewers feeling the weight of age).
Both Geoffrey Rush, and his opposite John Lithgow, give amazingly realistic performances and are the main reasons why "The Rule of Jenny Pen" is so great. Rush is quiet, worldly, and clever with John Lithgow being loud, demented, and explosive. Their performances, and the slowly growing dread shown through the film's gentle directing, make this experience feel like "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" (1962) meets "The Shining" (1980). Asthma inhalers and catheters become more than everyday tools for this nursing home.
I know what some other people are saying about "The Rule of Jenny Pen:" it doesn't measure up because the physical danger in the nursing home is not realistic. How could an elderly resident get away with so much terror and violence with zero consequences? This film spends too little time on the villain's backstory. Why is John Lithgow's performance so over-the-top in some scenes but then so restrained in others? I totally understand these criticisms, but I honestly forgot about them half-way into this film. That's how well I was enveloped in the two leading actors' performances. And I was easily enveloped in the psychological anxiety of the nursing home setting.
This film is so deeply affecting, because it feels like a microcosm of how the world treats the elderly during an unsettling time when they are experiencing loss of all kinds from mental deterioration to physical weakness. It also functions as an entertaining metaphor of the tyrannical rule of a dangerous dictator.
