Alex Casey reviews The Rule of Jenny Pen, a new local nightmare set within the four walls of a rest home.

Mortality and danger seep in from the very first scene of The Rule of Jenny Pen. As Judge Stefan Mortensen ONZM (Geoffrey Rush) squashes fly innards into his judge’s bench in the middle of a sentencing, we get the first of many warnings to anyone or anything who dares enter the film’s orbit: this is not going to be a painless ride, and not everyone is going to make it out alive. 

Nobody learns that better than Mortensen who, after suffering a debilitating stroke, finds himself out of the judge’s robes and into a shared room in an aged care facility. Directed by James Ashcroft and based on a short story by Owen Marshall, what transpires next is a cruel, claustrophobic and deeply disturbing ride, as Mortensen soon becomes the target of resident tormentor Dave Crealy (John Lithgow) and his creepy puppet called Jenny Pen. 

Don’t let the marketing fool you – this is no run-of-the-mill Annabelle or Chucky joint about a dolly with a mean streak, but a relentless rumination on mortality, legacy and power. As Crealy creeps about the hallways taunting Mortensen and his roommate Tony Garfield (George Henare) in increasingly sadistic ways, the film asks a question far scarier than anything Slappy the Living Dummy could conjure: what if you encounter pure evil, but nobody believes you? 

Once a pillar of society who professed “where there are no lions, hyenas rule”, Rush’s Mortensen is declawed and left at the mercy of Lithgow’s hyena, Crealy. Rush is exceptional as the cantankerous old curmudgeon thrown into a desperate situation, increasingly immobile but for the panic in his eyes. Joined by Garfield, a beloved former All Black, the pair represent some of the most respected positions held in New Zealand society, which makes it all the scarier when their autonomy is ripped away. 

While Jenny Pen might be the cover girl, Lithgow is the monstrous heart of the film. He barely even speaks at first, icy blue eyes staring from afar with the disquieting presence of Michael Myers standing among in the linens in Halloween, or Lecter lingering in his cell. That stillness soon gives way to a terrifying physicality, whether it is him unleashing physical violence come nightfall or doing a chillingly spry jig in the middle of the day in the residents lounge. 

(It’s also worth shouting out Lithgow’s New Zealand accent, one frequently so on-point that he even accurately pronounces the way an old racist white guy would mispronounce “meow-ri”.)

Also helping the creeping sense of dread are Ashcroft’s excruciating close-ups, slow zooms and disorienting camera angles. In Jenny Pen, action can play out in the reflection of a warped security mirror, or across a bustling room and through a window. Every choice makes audience feel more isolated and confused, sometimes obscuring a shot to just the tops of heads or the bottoms of legs, as if we will never get the full picture of what’s really happening. 

It’s effective, if a little frustrating at times, and speaks to a few other murky aspects of the film. There are suggestions of some kind of supernatural presence, but these are never fully explored. As things unravel, we get hints about Crealy’s villain origin story, but not quite the full story. An early Final Destination-style sequence within the rest home sets the spectacle and shock bar admirably high, and I’m not sure the film ever quite reaches it again. 

But perhaps a bit of ambiguity is the point here – Ashcroft told me himself he loves to dwell in the grey areas. The story gets a little muddled and repetitive towards the end, but so does Mortensen’s mental state, as conversations with specialists start to skip like CDs and his sense of time and place gets more and more distorted. The yawning long hallways, straight from The Shining, and flashing red smoke alarm lights certainly don’t make things anymore comfortable for anyone. 

Just like Ashcroft’s first film Coming Home in the Dark, Jenny Pen goes all in on its bold and brutal vision without any of the wink-wink splatter-comedy schtick that New Zealand horror films often lean on for safety. Also like Coming Home, it cackles in the face of categorisation – this isn’t really a horror film at all, but thriller doesn’t feel right either. When menace looms in everything from an unattended bath, to a gate left ajar, it feels like a whole new kind of nightmare altogether. 

The Rule of Jenny Pen is in cinemas nationwide from today.

Alex Casey talks to James Ashcroft about making his new rest home chiller The Rule of Jenny Pen, and finding an early fan in Stephen King. 

James Ashcroft was browsing the horror section of a Hollywood bookshop when he got the email from Stephen King. He’d sent the godfather of modern horror a screener of his new film a while ago, and was not anticipating a reply – let alone a glowing review – to arrive in his inbox. As he was reading the email in disbelief, his phone started to ping with a flurry of texts and notifications from people urgently directing him to check Stephen King’s X account. 

“I watched one of the best movies I’ve seen this year,” King had posted to his nearly seven million followers. “It’s called The Rule Of Jenny Pen, and I urge you to watch it”.

Based on a short story by Owen Marshall, The Rule of Jenny Pen is a psychological horror set within an aged care facility, where former judge Stefan Mortensen (Geoffrey Rush) finds himself living after suffering a debilitating stroke. Little does he know his life is about to get much, much worse when he becomes the latest target for puppet-wielding tormenter Dave Crealy (John Lithgow), a fellow resident who is far from retiring his penchant for torture and cruelty. 

“It’s a film about tyranny, and I think we live in tyrannical times and very punitive times,” Ashcroft tells The Spinoff over Zoom. “This is a story that could easily be transposed into a schoolyard or a corporate hierarchy.” Ashcroft also describes himself as having “a deep aversion to bullies”, something which he explored in his first film Coming Home in the Dark in 2021. “Left unchecked, bad behaviour grows like a weed. It also doesn’t always happen in plain sight.” 

Like Coming Home in the Dark, an intensely gripping and frequently shocking survival tale that unravels into a rumination on state abuse, Jenny Pen grabs viewers by the throat and does not relent. As some in his life have mused, why didn’t Ashcroft try out a romantic comedy? He traces it back to a childhood in Paraparaumu watching Sunday night horrors and Friday night frights, even encountering David Lynch’s macabre mystery Blue Velvet at the ripe age of 10. 

“Something probably died inside me that day,” he laughs. “I’d never seen anything like it – it felt like I hadn’t really watched a movie, but had a dream. I remember it lingering for a long time.” Eventually moving to Wellington to study at Toi Whakaari, Ashcroft worked as an actor in everything from Fresh Meat to Black Sheep to The Insider’s Guide to Love, while also running Māori theatre company Taki Rua Productions and directing multiple short films.

All the while, his love for the shadows persisted. “I enjoy playing in the dark,” he says. “I want to open up the audience’s mouths with screams, or laughter, and then stick something serious down their throat to digest afterwards.” He optioned Coming Home in the Dark and The Rule of Jenny Pen from Owen Marshall at the same time in the early 2010s. “Owen very astutely said that out of all 60 stories that he’s written, I chose the two with the darkest subject matters.” 

The Rule of Jenny Pen was the first feature film he ever wrote with collaborator Eli Kent 11 years ago, but it quickly became clear their ambitions outweighed their reality. “We would have never have been able to amass that level of budget or get buy-in from the Film Commission or the market as an untested director for a film like that,” he explains. “But I’m a big believer that projects come to life at the right time, in the right way, with the people that they’re meant to.” 

Over a decade later, Ashcroft and Kent’s nightmarish dream has come to life. Helmed by Lithgow and Rush, he says it was an honour to work alongside “two Olympians in their art form” as well as local acting royalty like George Henare and Ginette McDonald. “John and Geoffrey were both always looking for the flawed humanity in these characters,” he says. “It felt poignant and personal to them, both being of an age where you start to reflect on your life.” 

The majority of the filming took place at Wairakei resort, which was dressed to look like a rest home, and saw all the cast and crew living, working and socialising on location together. “It was great because it was like a wānanga structure,” says Ashcroft. “My favourite memory was seeing all the local actors in the bar, sitting in a big circle with John and Geoffrey, reminiscing about all the shows that they had done. I think that really built a sense of community and authenticity.” 

In another circular moment, Ashcroft also drew inspiration for Jenny Pen from many of the horrors he absorbed in his youth. The 1962 psychological thriller Whatever Happened to Baby Jane serves as a strong reference point in both theme and style. Stephen King’s Misery is there in the claustrophobic cruelty and two-hander tension. The Shining lurks in the empty hallways, all the way down to Ashcroft incorporating the iconic carpet pattern into the rest home’s wallpaper. 

Speaking of Stephen King, Ashcroft also reveals that their interaction didn’t end with just a nice email and a money-can’t-buy quote for the movie poster. The next morning, King’s representatives offered Ashcroft the chance to option one of his new novellas, Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream, for just $1. It’s also recently been announced that Ashcroft will direct Robert De Niro for Netflix movie The Whisper Man. “It’s all been very humbling,” he says of his ascent. 

For now, Ashcroft hopes that New Zealand audiences have fun playing in the dark with Jenny Pen when it opens in cinemas this week. “It is like a hot and cold shower. One minute you’re gasping, and the next minute you’re giggling,” he says. And after a decade-long battle to bring his confronting new nightmare to the screen, he’s just glad it is finally out there in the world. “I had one person say to my face ‘you are never going to get that made’,” he says. 

“They’ve got their invitation to the premiere – I hope they show up.” 

The Rule of Jenny Pen is in cinemas nationwide Thursday 20 March