Laura Kremmel
The New Zealand film The Rule of Jenny Pen (2024) is an innovative addition to a growing number of films about aging, care homes, and dementia, and it stands out for its lack of supernatural elements as the source of abuse and horror. Like films such as The Manor (2021), terror comes not from the staff but from other residents, alongside the horrors of their own aging minds and bodies. It also joins films like The Visit (2015) and Relic (2020), in which the central threat to the protagonists is aging people with dementia themselves rather than an external demonic force that has possessed them, as we see in The Taking of Deborah Logan (2014). Unlike sentimental family dramas of aging grandparents and parents that are mostly about the emotions of family members, the horror genre expertly explores the shocking and fearful experiences of losing independence and self-reliance. Not only is the space of the care home an uncanny one—and this home seems to be one of the nice ones!—but the body and mind become foreign and disturbing.[i]
Synopsis:
The Rule of Jenny Pen, directed by James Ashcroft is largely set in the elderly care home, Royal Pine Mews, where residents are fed and bathed by staff, entertained by enrichment activities like dancing and music, and securely locked indoors with restricted keycard access. Judge Stefan Mortensen, played by Geoffrey Rush, has just had a stroke whilst delivering the sentence for a child sexual abuse case. He believes his condition is temporary and is unhappy with having to share a room with former rugby star, Tony Garfield, played by George Henare. He soon learns that another patient, Dave Crealy, played by John Lithgow, will become an even bigger problem, along with his puppet, Jenny Pen.
Warning: spoilers ahead.
“Where there are no Lions, Hyenas Rule”
Most of the film documents Crealy and Jenny Pen’s daily and nightly abuse of the other residents, especially Tony. In broad daylight, Crealy steals food from others, bullies dancers into leaving the dance floor by plowing into them, and disturbs the peace by laughing hysterically at the TV. Nights are more sinister, as residents must swear allegiance to the puppet, “lick her asshole” (his wrist), and suffer physical abuse. When Jenny Pen sits on their chests in bed and asks, “Who rules?” Crealy drives home the helplessness and vulnerability of the care home: the patients no longer rule themselves, and not even the staff is in control. Chaos and helplessness rule through a dirty plastic doll-headed puppet with hollow eyes and empty mouth (two of the physical features Lithgow altered for the role: false teeth and grey contact lenses, cementing their symbiotic relationship). Even those who respond “Jenny Pen” to her question don’t escape unscathed, Lithgow molesting them for his own pleasure.
While some reviews have called Stefan snobby and condescending,[ii] a more generous read might acknowledge that his drastic fall from a state of absolute authority casting what appear to be fair judgements on others—most of them rapists—has left him disoriented and defensive. His stroke occurs while he is declaring the terms of a prison sentence and chastising the mother of the children who were abused as she thanks him for the harsh punishment. After stumbling multiple times on the line “with that in mind,” he says, “Where there are no lions, hyenas rule. You’re culpable… you’re not the victim here,” all phrases that will be repeated throughout the film as culpability is complicated by disability, and as victimhood becomes a new experience for the judge. Cutting away from the scene of his stroke in the courtroom, the next scene is of his feet as he is lowered into a wheelchair from a van, then goes through “processing” while a doctor pokes and prods him, and is finally reduced to a label with his name on it added to a door. It’s difficult not to see him as a prisoner, his crime being his age and ill health. His imprisonment is further emphasized when his keycard refuses to allow him outside. The first relief he has from this ordeal is commiserating with a fellow resident, who kindly offers him a smoke and a flask. Of course, this friendly exchange is rewarded with his first in-home trauma: the man spilling his booze, lighting his cigarette, and bursting into flames. After that, he’s reluctant to make friends.
The repeated refrain of “Where there are no lions, hyenas rule,” clearly argues that the lack of reliable authority in the care home directly leads to the rule of Jenny Pen and Crealy, just as the mother who failed to care for her children was culpable for their abuse. The film all but hits us over the head with this reading, but it is a terrifying hit. Nature programs are perpetually on during the day, and Crealy plants himself right in front. When hyenas are shown, he laughs hysterically, stretching his arm out so the puppet can also rejoice in this animal anarchy. In Stefan’s mind, the voice warps into actual hyena barking, no longer seeing Crealy as human but as an animal predator.
What is notable during this scene as well as most others is the complete lack of available assistance. Stefan screams for help. While the staff are kind and capable during the few scenes in which we see them, they simply are not there for most of the film, and when they are there it is only to witness in bits and pieces, leading to the type of gaslighting familiar in medical horror and elder horror: the horror of not being believed or not being heard or both. The staff are absent for some of the most extreme acts of abuse in the film like the fire, but also including what might have become Crealy’s rape of a woman he begins undressing for “mummy’s bath” had Stefan not stopped him. The staff conveniently appear each time Stefan retaliates against Crealy, thereby appointing him the aggressor and failing to acknowledge his complaints. So, when Stefan beats Crealy off the woman with a cane, he is the one tackled to the ground by staff. This repeated discrediting by the lions meant to protect him is what ultimately causes Stefan to acknowledge the rule of Jenny Pen, temporarily, at least.
Dehumanization of people with dementia is one of the central targets that triggered the rise of critical dementia studies, a field that studies the experience of dementia, the treatment of those with dementia, and how dementia is portrayed in cultural representations. This field, like most, is full of disagreements, with some early critics blaming staff for inhumane treatment and others claiming that blame should be directed at institutions rather than underpaid, overworked staff.[iii] Stefan mentions his difficulty finding a facility “within my price range,” implying that Royal Pine Mews may underserve its residents because of underfunding. Though the residents never seem to lack for enrichment—volunteers, presumably—the lack of official support is telling, forcing residents to find their own ways of coping. Stefan, Tony, and Crealy all adopt totems of power and protection in the absence of staff: Tony’s defense is motivated by maintaining positive ties to family and his past as a rugby star. His one attempt at power against Crealy is to perform the Haka, “Ka Mate, Ka Mate,” a Maori chant of power and defiance, though he cannot get through it without physically breaking down.[iv] Crealy, of course, draws great power from Jenny Pen, and defends himself with an inhaler whenever his body starts to fail. Stefan draws power from his books and from quoting from memory when he struggles to read (even correcting Tony’s minor misquoting of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias”). His defense is one that, like the others, repeatedly fails, and that is his faith in law and order. During his first nighttime encounter with Crealy, he frantically presses the alarm button (which Crealy has unplugged) and shouts, “you’re not allowed to do that!” clinging to the belief that right and wrong will save him. But right and wrong requires lions.
“Like Children”
Reviewer Grant Hermanns points out the beauty of camera angles throughout the film, noting that we are “attached to Mortensen’s hip for the movie’s story,” and the low angle does indeed mimic the viewpoint of a wheelchair user.[v] It also mimics the viewpoint of a child.
Amongst the common ways to treat people with dementia is infantilization, which some might argue is an innocuous approach compared to the abuse and neglect that comprise some other common ways. Kindness, patience, speaking slowly all easily become “talking down” and “babying,” and perhaps this approach is found to be comforting for some patients. Critical dementia studies, however, questions this neglect of adult agency, despite the new and intense dependency people with dementia face. In criticizing the phrase “second childhood,” Clara Mason and colleagues claim, “It gives little value to the fact that people with dementia have had lives and learned how to do these things, but due to cognitive impairment and other disabilities are no longer able to” (43).[vi] Stefan’s resistance to be infantilized—for example, shaking his head painfully when a musician gets to his name during a performance of “Stefan’s got a lovely bunch of coconuts”—which is interpreted by residents, staff, and film critics alike as rudeness, is an attempt to maintain his adult status as a respected judge. The audience shares the humiliation of residents, however well-intentioned belittling behavior may be: the false positivity of encouraging Stefan to regain use of hand to grab a cup, the careful attentive showers (and less attentive baths), and the helpful wheelchair pushes despite Stefan’s repeated insistence, “I can do it.” The growing power of Jenny Pen wears down Stefans’s grasp of independence as part of his identity, but the conditions of the care home get him halfway there.
The Rule of Jenny Pen introduces a new take on infantilization of the elderly by combining the trope of the creepy doll/puppet with the familiar coming-of-age theme of bullying. In fact, during an interview with Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow, Lithgow mentions that Ashcroft told him that “he has three daughters, which means he thinks all the time about bullying, but it had never occurred to him that his parents, his aging parents, might face the same challenge in the last years of their life.”[vii] This level of bullying seems to arise from two conditions. First, the encouraged infantilization of playing with a puppet, which is worn even during mealtimes and only comes off during some shower times and during the sexual assault of the confused woman. Crealy refuses to talk to anyone during the day except for a snide remark or private conversation to further bully Stefan or Tony. To the staff, he communicates only through the puppet, to which they then direct all their conversation, even when he is approached about Stefan’s complaints against him. Puppets and dolls are used as therapy in care homes, and there are many documented claims of success in fostering interest, creativity, even communication for patients with particularly advanced cases of dementia. Many of these “therapies” appear to involve care home residents watching puppet shows, though some do involve these residents using puppets themselves. One resident in a care home in Australia disputes the idea that puppets are childish, reporting “Puppets give you an opportunity to project anything and everything. It’s safe.”[viii] Karrie Marshall, in her book, Puppetry in Dementia Care: Connecting through Creativity and Joy, places particular importance on the creation of puppets as well as animating them, which differs from the film. But, she writes, “the puppet appears to take on an ‘aliveness’, regardless of the skills of the puppeteer” (17).[ix]
There is no doubt that Crealy sees an “aliveness” in Jenny Pen, an extension of himself that permits him to revert to a schoolyard bully with her collaboration. And Crealy is certainly projecting in a way that is “safe,” his silent and mild manners filtered through the puppet as his only interaction with staff, who see him as harmless and sweet. At the same time, it’s clear that the residents cannot help each other, even to bear witness to the experience of abuse they share. Tony doesn’t report Crealy because he’s worried about damaging his reputation with his family, and Stefan’s reports are unheard or ignored, but the rest of the residents don’t report because of their cognitive decline. A sea of silent eyes watching, unable (or unwilling) to react or to recount what happened is present for many of the film’s major scenes of conflict. The woman Crealy assaults originally recognizes him as “my Georgie,” but she is clearly calling for that familiar person in a pleading voice as she is violated because she is unable to articulate or protest what is being done to her. Crealy loves an audience, but he doesn’t count every resident as worthy of that role.
The second condition that cultivates Crealy’s bullying is a direct contradiction of Mason’s claim that treating people with dementia like children fails to recognize their full, rich lives of accomplishments. When the judge asks Tony, “What’s his story?” Stefan learns that there is no story to be told. Crealy himself feels that his life has been utterly story-less, that he has only now begun to live with the help of Jenny Pen. Photos on the wall suggest that Crealy used to be part of the custodial staff in the home, a job he clearly found unfulfilling. “My whole life, I’ve been so bored,” he tells Stefan. “I look back, it’s like looking into an empty bin…. But time it seems has awarded me certain advantages. Be a waste not to honor that, don’t you think? Claim the richness of experience that’s been denied me?” And it is in this moment that he claims his power over this respected and accomplished man, eliciting a weak “Jen Pen” and a lick in response to his familiar question, “Who rules?” He also reads aloud from a poster, “We don’t stop playing because we get old. We get old because we stop playing,” adding ““And ain’t it strange in this place of all places, here I am full of life.” In this moment, he pulls Stefan into his delusions, making Jenny Pen huge and all powerful (and in other scenes he sees her face change and her sockets fill with Crealy’s eyes). Matt Donato wonders whether moments like these may make us question Stefan as an “unfaithful narrator,” but the gaslighting experience is masterfully and accurately rendered.[x] We’re not meant to think anything supernatural is going on here beyond the power of a bully to impose his view of the world on his victims.
Wrist-licking and Nightly Emissions
In a particularly over-the-top battle of wills, Crealy dances maniacally to the song, “Knees Up Mother Brown,” and brings himself to an asthma attack only to find all his inhalers have been emptied by Stefan. Among the repeated lyrics are, “Oh my, what a rotten song. What a rotten singer, too.” A familiar feature of elder horror is the sheer grossness of bodies and the ways in which aging bodies may produce rottenness in excess to the horror and shame of those individuals.
One version of “Knees Up Mother Brown”
This rottenness, however, is powerful and important in The Rule of Jenny Pen because, contrary to common interpretation, it humanizes the residents, particularly in comparison to Jenny Pen the plastic-headed doll puppet that is hollow and empty of any fluids. During one of his cruelest moments, Crealy approaches a woman who is convinced her family will be there for her “as soon as Christmas is over.” To get her attention, he knocks Jenny Pen’s hard head against her petite vulnerable one, producing a shocking, painful echoing sound. When Stefan spits in Jenny Pen’s face during one of the nightly assaults, Jenny Pen cannot spit back, and so Crealy must spit for her and does so three times to compensate. His go-to method of bullying, remember, is to aim for where it hurts and humiliates: a bad hip, a catheter, even just a full bedpan to empty over genitals. And Jenny Pen doesn’t actually have an asshole to lick and can’t do any licking of her own. The aging body may seem gross but it is also extremely delicate. The excessive bodily fluids throughout the film—blood, spit (so much spit), urine, even the air with which Crealy struggles to fill his lungs—insist on the organic nature of these bodies that, though they’re becoming unpredictable and weaker, cannot be reduced to mere objects. By the end, even Stefan is wearing a bib and appears to struggle to feed himself.
To return to the notion of the uncanny space of the care home and the uncanniness of a body and mind that suddenly become foreign and unpredictable, the physically disgusting waste products of these bodies keep them grounded and real. If Freud describes one aspect of the uncanny as (quoting Jentsch) “doubt as to whether an apparently inanimate object really is alive and, conversely, whether a lifeless object might not perhaps be animate” (135), these fluids seem to suggest at least some indications of life. Leaking, emitting, and producing, in addition to moments of enthusiastic dancing and eating, show that the residents of Royal Pine Mews are neither inanimate nor lifeless unlike the puppet who rules them.
“All Those Books Are About the Same Thing”
Finally, I think it’s worth pointing out how much this film harkens back to other films about madness, institutionalization, and care homes, not as a weakness but as a conscious contribution to an ongoing conversation about a topic of increased importance. Just as Stefen’s well-read brain applies so many literary quotes, from Shakespeare to Hemingway (unlike Tony’s paperback thriller, to which Stefan replies, “All those books are about the same thing”), the film interweaves clear connections to other texts in novel situations. In addition to doll horror movies like Saw, Annabelle, and The Boy, these texts are clear influences:
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975): In the same interview in which Lithgow discusses bullying, Rush mentions this as one of the influences, and it is certainly one of the Hollywood blueprints for films about institutionalization. Scenes in the common room and mealtime harken back to the forced community time in Cuckoo’s Nest.
The Shining (1980): Two moments harken back to this classic Stanley Kubrick film, the scene in which Crealy tells the woman who thinks she’s going home at Christmas, “You’ve been here for years,” and the scene in which Stefan examines a series of black-and-white photos featuring Crealy as a staff member getting younger in each one. He, it seems, is the one who has been there for years.
David Lynch: The sound design of Crealy pushing Stefan down a hallway as he soundlessly screams is just one echo of the roaring noise that accompanies Bob in Twin Peaks (1990-91) and the end of Mulholland Drive (2001). It’s an effective move that drives home the terror of Jenny Pen’s rule at just the right moments. There is also the unmistakable repeated image of the red curtains reminiscent of the Red Room in Twin Peaks.
The X-Files, season 2 episode 11 “Excelsis Dei” 1994: This is one of the few other narratives I can think of that includes fellow elderly care home residents terrorizing each other at night, sharing a knowledge that the staff (and agents Mulder and Scully) can’t access, but that they can’t express in a believable way.
“The Rule of Jenny Pen,” by Owen Marshall: Alas, I have not been able to access this short story that inspired the film. From what I understand, it is told from Crealy’s point of view, which would obviously make a big difference.
You can find The Rule of Jenny Pen on Shudder.
NOTES
[i] Suggested reading on these topics: Elder Horror: Essays on Film’s Frightening Images of Aging, edited by Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Ripper (McFarland, 2019) and The Silvering Screen: Old Age and Disability in Cinema, by Sally Chivers (University of Toronto Press, 2011).
[ii] Katie Rife calls Stefan a “condescending dickhead.” She also notes that the “obsession with pee” suggests that the film is a “campy, unserious one,” but rarely is urine framed in a lighthearted or humorous way in the film. Rife, Katie. “Reviews: The Rule of Jenny Pen.” RogerEbert.com. March 4, 2025.
[iii] Capstick, Andrea. “The Century without a War: Kitwood’s Concept of Malignant Social Psychology and the Need for Historicisation in Dementia Studies” in A Critical History of Dementia Studies, edited by James Rupert Fletcher and Andrea Capstick, Routledge, 2023. pp. 27-37
[iv] “The Haka,” All Blacks Rugby.
[v] Hermanns, Grant. “The Rule Of Jenny Pen Review: I Felt Claustrophobic Watching John Lithgow’s Delightfully Terrifying Turn In Unpredictable Thriller.” Screen Rant. March 5, 2025.
[vi] Mason, Clara, et. al. “Language about People with Dementia” in A Critical History of Dementia Studies, Edited by James Rupert Fletcher and Andrea Capstick, Routledge, 2024. pp. 41-54.
[vii] Mashable, “Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow Reveal Their Character Inspirations for The Rule of Jenny Pen.” March 11, 2025.
[viii] Kelly, Christopher. “Puppet Therapy Putting Smiles on Faces” Australian Ageing Agenda, May 31, 2022.
[ix] Marshall, Karrie. Puppetry in Dementia Care: Connecting through Creativity and Joy. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2013.
[x] Donato, Matt. “‘The Rule of Jenny Pen’ Review—Elder Care Horror Tale Will Make Your Skin Crawl.” Bloody Disgusting. March 5, 2025.
Laura Kremmel is Assistant Professor of English at Niagara University. She is the author of Romantic Medicine and the Gothic Imagination: Morbid Anatomies (2022) and the co-editor of The Palgrave Handbook to Horror Literature (2018). She publishes work on Horror/Gothic Studies, the History of Medicine/Medical Humanities, Disability Studies, and British Romanticism and her current project is on the Gothic and dementia. Laura has written previously for Horror Homeroom on disability in Don’t Breathe, American Mary and the Gothic heroine, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House,and Crimson Peak. You can find her on Bluesky at @LKremmel.
