The Rule of Jenny Pen (2024) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐

Confined to a secluded rest home and trapped within his stroke-ridden body, a former Judge must stop an elderly psychopath who employs a child’s puppet to abuse the home’s residents with deadly consequences.

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.

Mo Moshaty

Mo Moshaty is an acclaimed horror writer, lecturer, and producer whose work combines visceral storytelling with the psychological insight of her Cognitive Behavioral Therapy background. She has lectured internationally, including as a keynote speaker at Nightmares from Monkeypaw: A Jordan Peele Symposium (Prairie View A&M), No Return: A Yellowjackets Symposium (Horror Studies BAFSS Sig), The Whole Damn Swarm: Celebrating 30 Years of Candyman (University of California), and with the Centre for the History of the Gothic (University of Sheffield). Mo has also presented at the BFI, Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies, and Final Girls Berlin Film Festival’s Brain Binge on women’s trauma in horror cinema, Cine-Excess on The Creepy Kid Horror Subgenre and Mother/Daughter Trauma in Horror, and Romancing the Gothic on Cosmic Horror’s Havoc on The Body Electric Her short film, 13 Minutes of Horror: Sci-Fi Horror, won the 2022 Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award for Best Short Film. As a core producer with Nyx Horror Collective, Mo co-created the 13 Minutes of Horror Film Fest and partnered with Shudder in 2021 and 2022, while also establishing a Stowe Story Labs fellowship supporting women creatives over 40+ in horror. A member of the Black Women in Horror Class of 2023 and featured in 160 Black Women in Horror, Mo’s short fiction appears in A Quaint and Curious Volume of Gothic Tales (Brigid’s Gate Press) and 206 Word Stories (Bag O’ Bones Press). Her debut novella, Love the Sinner, was released July 5, 2024, with Clairviolence: Tales of Tarot and Torment released in October 2025. The first of her five-volume non-fiction series, The Annex of the Obscure: The Afterlife, will be released in 2027 from Tenebrous Press. As the Editor-in-Chief of NightTide Magazine and founder of Mourning Manor Media, Mo champions marginalized voices in horror. Under her leadership, NightTide plans to launch a film festival in 2028, furthering her mission to reshape the genre through inclusivity and representation.