Through the false sense of security with films like The World According to Garp, Harry and the Hendersons and God awful Footloose, we forget that horror especially loves John Lithgow. Crushing us in Raising Cain, Blow Out (which no one talks enough about) and Pet Sematary’s 2019 incantation. Let’s face it, the man eats.

The Rule of Jenny Pen (based on the short story by Owen Marshall) is no exception as he stokes the fires of creepiness and psychopathy. Enter Judge Stefan Mortensen (Geoffrey Rush) whose long and beleaguered years on the bench have made him cold and brusque and now his body is getting the better of him. While trying a case, Stefan has a stroke, leaving him paralyzed on his left side and slowly declining day by day. Against his wishes and wants, he’s forced to live out his treatment in a convalescent home where he meets fellow patient Dave Crealy (John Lithgow) who seems unassuming and childlike, poised with a doll puppet on his hands at all times. He’s a disturbance surely, but it’s not until Stefan watches him terrorize and molest his rooming patient Tony (George Henare) that he sparks a crusade against Crealey with no support in sight. He’s deemed feeble, forgetful and becomes labelled as the menace to the elder society which Crealey eats up.

As Stefan watches in horror as Crealey gets more and more bold in his harassment and violence against the other patients, he hatches a plan that finds no takers as everyone fears retaliation, and Stefan’s condition worsens sending him further into the depths and at the mercy of Crealey.

Not one to give up without a fight, Stefan finds the strength to beat Crealey at his own game using any means necessary. Lithgow is electric and horrifying as Crealey, using his doll to terrorize, taunt, insult and abuse his fellow patients into submission. Rush finds a sympathetic eye from me as Stefan – going from unbearably cantankerous to a helpless victim of elder abuse. It had a few loose ends that never gone resolved or spoken of again which hurt its final third and kept it from five-star territory for me.

Directed by James Ashcroft, known for Coming Home in the Dark (2021), Black Sheep (2006) and Fresh Meat (2012), so we know where in for a bleak, helpless, psycho-thriller of a time.