Everyone has met someone so full of themselves that you wish you could be there for their comeuppance and subsequent humbling.  Since this rarely happens in real life, movies like The Rule of Jenny Pen oblige us in this type of wish fulfillment.  In it, Judge Stefan Mortensen (Geoffrey Rush)  is exactly the kind of arrogant bastard who we can’t wait to see laid low by fate.  But, as the saying goes, even the wicked get worse than they deserve.

When he first appeared, I immediately took Stefan for a long-time judge who’s become accustomed to not being questioned.  He also doesn’t care if what he says offends anyone, so long as justice is served.  In what turns out to be Stefan’s last day in court, he hands down the sentence for a defendant who’s been found guilty of multiple sexual offenses.  He’s eager to send him away for a long while and doesn’t mince words when addressing the defendant.  Stefan doesn’t stop there, though, and also accuses the victim’s family of looking the other way while the abuse took place.  Given that the trial is over, everything Stefan says is clearly out of bounds, but he continues on with the surety of someone who is untouchable..

It’s while Stefan is making his accusations that we see him begin to physically struggle.  Stefan shows the telltale signs of having a stroke and collapses to the floor.  After a short stay at the hospital, he’s transported to a nursing home.  Stefan is reasonably well off, he can’t buy a private room in an exclusive facility because they are all full.  Instead, he finds himself at a beaten down place far from the city, where he’s forced to share a room.  Even though he’s confined to a power chair, Stefan is confident that he’ll get over his setback in short order and be on his way.  But as we know, strokes are tricky business and there’s no guarantee he’ll recover from it.

The first sign that things won’t go well for Stefan is when he shares a cigarette with another resident.  Due to a mishap with a flask, the other man catches fire and is quickly engulfed in flames.  Unfortunately, Stefan is unable to help him and watches him become engulfed by flames.  This horrific event is a sign that Stefan’s new reality is far worse than he’s willing to admit, at least initially.  And yes, things do get progressively worse for him from here.

As a former judge, Stefan is used to his words carrying the weight of law.  Not so in a nursing home.  Stefan belligerently orders the staff to do as he commands, and they start ignoring him.  He also believes that he can treat people rudely without consequence, as he does with his roommate Sonny (Nathaniel Lees).  It doesn’t take long for Stefan’s mouth and demeanor to invite serious trouble.

That humbling I alluded to above arrives in the form of fellow resident Dave Crealy, a mentally unstable patient who wears a puppet on his hand constantly.  He refuses to relinquish it to the staff, who are content to leave him be.  What they don’t know is that Dave is terrorizing all of the other patients, and that Jenny Pen, the name for his puppet, is the instrument of his torture.

When Stefan observes Dave taking liberties with the other residents, he promptly alerts the staff.  They brush it off, but Stefan’s tattling has put him in Dave’s crosshairs.  That night, Dave enters Stefan and Sonny’s secured room and proceeds to physically abuse Sonny.  Dave also warns Stefan to not get in his way and douses his crotch with water.  Of course, Stefan reports this to the staff, who believe he was seeing things and wet himself.  Sonny refuses to corroborate Stefan’s story because he’s terrified of Dave and angry at Stefan’s dismissive attitude.

Over the next several days, Stefan becomes increasingly aware that despite regular physical therapy, he’s not getting any better.  Even more troubling is that he’s been “winking”, or losing track of time.  Additionally, Stefan has noticed that Dave torments all of the other residents, and confronting him about his behavior has made matters worse.  Their mutual animosity for each other fuels an increasingly vicious tit-for-tat war between them.  However, Stefan realizes that with Dave being the “firmest of the infirm”, it’s only a matter of time before he actually kills him.

Recommendation

The primary source of enjoyment from The Rule of Jenny Pen comes from watching two veteran scene-stealers like John Lithgow and Geoffrey Rush go at each other.  Lithgow has portrayed  memorable psychopaths before (Raising Cain, Showtime’s Dexter), but never one like Dave Crealy.  Malicious and vicious, he’s a vengeful id with no restraint or remorse.  As his sparring partner, Rush is more than up to the challenge.  He plays Stefan Mortensen as haughty and generally insufferable, a man who’s accustomed to getting his way until his body betrays him.  Seeing them throw punches like heavyweight boxers was a treat, something I rarely see in movies these days.

The movie is particularly effective as a psychological horror story because it grounds the action within a genuinely terrifying reality.  It focuses on how any of us can go from living a normal life to being trapped in a thoroughly depressing situation in an instant.  The journey Rush’s character takes reminded me of Dante’s Inferno, where his character experience grows worse and worse as time goes on, with no chance for escape.  After seeing this movie, I’m surprised that there haven’t been more films that exploit the fears we all have of being forced to live in a nursing home.

While writer-director James Ashcroft is certainly fortunate to have Rush and Lithgow in the leading roles, he isn’t content to sit back and watch their fireworks.  Ashcroft’s off-kilter direction captures the overwhelmingly depressing aspects of the nursing home environment, consisting of faded, nondescript rooms, unending hallways and dingy personal care facilities.  Within this nightmare landscape he shocks us with a brutally honest depiction of the daily lives of the residents, who alternate between long periods of monotony and acute moments of terror.  Finally, he succeeds in transforming the puppet into the most disturbing baby toy I’ve seen in a movie since Toy Story 3.

The Rule of Jenny Pen is a savagely funny little horror movie.  Although you’ll need to suspend your disbelief on more than one occasion, the film’s merits more than make up for its lapses.  The gripping performances by Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow alone make it worth watching.  Recommended.

Analysis

Several years ago, I watched a close personal family member go from living at home to permanently residing in nursing homes in a very short span of time.  Like Stefan, he was a proud man who valued his independence.  Then, after a series of physically traumatic incidents, he became a wheelchair bound invalid.  He eventually was admitted into a nice assisted living center with excellent support staff, but what I saw before then has stuck with me ever since.

If you’ve never experienced anything like this first-hand, you’ll probably be incredulous as to how nursing home life is depicted in The Rule of Jenny Pen.  One critic describes it as “It’s a deeply exaggerated, unbelievable world of catatonic old people.”  I wish him the best and hope that he never experiences what most nursing homes are really like.  Personally, I found the movie to be shockingly accurate.

The first two nursing homes my family member was placed in were dismal.  The facilities were dingy and smelled of urine.  The staff were uncaring and spent most of their time chatting with other staff members.  Calls to the staff went unanswered for long periods of time.  The majority of residents were bedridden and barely conscious.  Although the setting of Jenny Pen isn’t as bad as what I’ve described, watching the movie was like revisiting a nightmare world.

A descent into geriatric hell

What makes The Rule of Jenny Pen so effective is its realistic depiction of Stefan’s descent into “geriatric hell”.  Unlike the Christian definition of hell, geriatric hell is where the elderly find themselves for having committed the sin of growing old.  Stefan only becomes aware that he’s landed in this hell after he stops denying what he sees and accepts the following facts.

You have no say in where you’ll convalesce.  Although Stefan is a man of means, he can’t choose where he’ll stay because all of the nicer facilities are full.  Although the nursing home he finds himself at is decent, it is also over capacity and requires him to share a room with another resident.

You’re no longer physically able to care for yourself.  After his stroke, Stefan goes from being a judge to an invalid.  Although he can do some things by himself, like piloting his wheelchair, reading a book and feeding himself, he’s reliant upon the staff to help him with everything else.

Being a resident in a nursing home is a humbling experience.  Everything you used to do in private, like bathing, dressing and toileting are done in the presence of someone else.  Strangers will become intimately familiar with every aspect of your body.  Holding onto a sense of dignity is pointless.

Once you’re in a nursing home, you’ll probably never leave.  For those like Stefan and Sonny, it’s very unlikely that they’ll recover from their physical issues enough to return home.  Sonny’s hip bothers him so much that he needs a catheter in case he can’t get to the bathroom in time.  Despite Stefan’s physical therapy sessions, he isn’t making progress.  Just like the residents suffering from mental diseases like dementia or Alzhiemers, Stefan and Sonny will live out their remaining days at the nursing home.

The longer you live at a nursing home, the more time slips by unnoticed.  Stefan “winks out” at several points in the story.  He finds himself drifting off at any moment and wakes up disoriented, wondering how he’s gotten where he’s at.  The combination of monotony and medication cause Stefan to drift away.

Whether you live or die depends upon the kindness–or malevolence–of strangers.  Shortly after Stefan arrives at the nursing home he watches helplessly as the other man burns to death.  That man could have survived if a nurse had been in the area monitoring things, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case.  Stefan nearly drowns in the bathtub when he allows the nurse to leave and he can’t pull himself up from under the water.  Other residents die at Dave’s hands because the staff can’t check in on every resident throughout the night.

If nobody visits you when you’re in a nursing home, it means that nobody likes you.  Stefan comes to this realization after noticing that nobody has checked up on him since he arrived.  He doesn’t use being placed outside the city as an excuse.  He understands that he was an arrogant prick and that is why he finds himself alone at this point in his life.  It’s also the reason why he instantly turned Dave into an enemy.

Your stay at a nursing home will go much better if you make friends with the staff and the other residents.  Initially, Stefan is rude to everyone, demanding that they respect him as a judge.  It’s only after he accepts his situation and befriends Sonny that he’s able to make life better for himself and everyone else.

In the land of the blind…

While Stefan adjusts to his new reality, he’s also tasked with unravelling the mystery behind Dave’s malicious behavior.  At first, Stefan regards Dave as a madman who tortures everyone indiscriminately.  As Dave’s interactions with Stefan become more personal, we learn that Dave’s motivations are much more complex.

Unlike Stefan, Dave chose to retire at this particular nursing home, where he had also toiled away in the shadows as a janitor.  He settled on this arrangement so that he could exact revenge for his disappointing life on his fellow residents.  Dave did this knowing that he would be the most able-bodied of all the residents, meaning that nobody would be unable to fend him off.  As a former employee, he has a security badge that provides him with access to all of the residential rooms day and night.  Also as a former long-time employee of the facility, he’s familiar with the work patterns of the staff and knows how to walk around without being detected.  After spending his life being overlooked and unappreciated, Dave has deviously  positioned himself as the malevolent king of the geriatric underworld.

The puppet master

Considering how easily Dave has his way with the residents, there was no need for him to include a puppet in his routines.  However, Dave cleverly uses the puppet to externalize the torture he delivers to his victims.  By itself, the puppet is a harmless child’s toy.  In Dave’s hands, the residents recognize it as an instrument for physical abuse.  He’s conditioned them to dread the puppet touching them, as if it were a gun or a knife.

Dave’s puppet symbolizes how he’s bent the nursing home experience to his will.  Although the puppet is intended to be used in therapy sessions for the mentally ill patients,  Dave has appropriated it to pass as one of them.  The staff avoid him because he wears it all the time and don’t want to enrage him.

Dave’s puppet also represents his attitude towards the other residents.  He looks upon them as helpless children.  Accordingly, he feels that the best way to torture them is with a child’s toy.

Nitpickers

I read a comment on Jenny Pen where the person found the movie unbelievable because of the absence of security cameras throughout the nursing home.  This allows Dave to roam completely unfettered both inside and outside the facility with minimal concern for being caught.  Initially, I’d assumed that the movie was based in the past, in a time when cameras weren’t the norm.  However, I remembered that one of the staff pictures was dated 2012, meaning that cameras should have been present even in a meager facility such as this one.

After doing some research, I found that the short story upon which the movie is based was  published in 1992.  This leads me to believe that writer-director James Ashcroft set the movie in modern times to avoid having to pay for a historically accurate production design on a micro budget.