The Rule of Jenny Pen: John Lithgow and Geoffrey Rush star in ‘pure choking horror’

This “care-home thriller” from the New Zealand director James Ashcroft is an unusual affair, said Tim Robey in The Telegraph.

Ten minutes into the film, a judge, Stefan (Geoffrey Rush), suffers a stroke mid-trial and is confined to a nursing facility, where he almost immediately sees a patient accidentally incinerate himself. It sets the tone for what follows: it turns out that patients at the home are being terrorised behind the staff’s back by one of its long-term residents, a “sadistic maniac” called Dave (John Lithgow). Bearing a therapeutic hand puppet he calls “Jenny Pen”, its eyes plucked out “for added menace”, he creeps into his fellow patients’ rooms at night and forces them “to pay obeisance to her in the most demeaning ways”. It’s a terrific premise – and to an extent a plausible one – but the film falls flat, owing largely to a “leaky script” that drains it of the necessary suspense.