I haven’t seen many films set in Australia or New Zealand, but I’ve seen a few here or there. The Rule of Jenny Pen is the latest from New Zealand. It’s also a Shudder release. With that comes a dark and / or twisted kind of story they have come to be known for. This is definitely something weird that I didn’t expect, that’s for sure. It’s based on a short story from Owen Marshall. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, though.

Stefan Mortensen (Geoffrey Rush) is a judge, and while he’s in the middle of court, he has a stroke. He ends up at an assisted living facility to help him regain his ability to walk again and move part of his body once again. While there, he encounters another man, Dave Crealy (John Lithgow), who has a doll on his hand, and he calls Jenny Pen. He uses this alter ego to torment his fellow assisted living members. Specifically, Tony Garfield (George Henare) is a retired rugby player. It’s not fun for anybody at the old folks home, that’s for sure.

The majority of the film is set at the assisted living facility.  Most of the tormenting goes on at night when Lithgows character has the run of the place. He’s been there so long, though nobody suspects him of being a bad guy, let alone a bully of his fellow assisted living members. Lithgow has a very good accent, and Rush and Henare just use their own accents, which aren’t that far off from their Australian accents. The accents help set the scenario quite nicely. I don’t know if this story would work if it were an American type story.

Both Lithgow and Rush have celebrated careers. Both have won Oscars, Rush, and Emmy’s Lithgow, respectively, in their stories. The work they’ve done in film and television is pretty extensive.  Roles in Shine, The King’s Speech, and The Pirates of The Caribbean franchise, as well as Genius, has proven Rush is one of the best living actors. Lithgow has done quite a bit more, but less high profile. His performances on Conclave, and The Old Man in recent years has proven he’s still in the game, but these two performances in this film are lackluster and not of the level they’ve been accustomed to giving in the past.

The major problem I had with this film was that it’s supposed to be scary, and it’s not. I laughed at all the crazy antics from Lithgow’s character more than I was scared of him. The back and forth between he and Rush’s character was just a game of who was going to get who in the end, and I wasn’t that interested in their feed at all. I like how Rush’s character stood up for Henares’ character, though. I don’t like Billy’s very much. In the end, there just wasn’t much about this movie I liked, unfortunately. 

There is a bit of suspension in this movie, but not as much as It should have been. The setting and characters don’t amount to much in the overall context of the story. I wasn’t that enamored with each, to be honest. I don’t feel an old folks home with old men, and women brought very much scare or thrills. It was mostly creepy, if anything. The doll on the arm with a voice as the antagonist wasn’t very scary at all to me. Maybe in different hands this could have been a better film, but these two great actors were wasting in a boring film.

1 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen