Quick synopsis: Recovering from a stroke at an assisted living facility, a judge encounters a psychopathic patient who uses a hand puppet to abuse fellow residents.

There are not many horror films focused on the elderly. On the rare occasions those films exist, they tend to come in the same two flavours. One, the elderly as the villains. These generally boil down to “ewwww, old people”. The others are with the elderly as a victim, these are usually more interesting (so are rarer, because Hollywood hates interesting), and show the elderly as trying to survive. At the same time, they struggle against not only the villain, but also their limitations brought on by age. The Rule of Jenny Pen (TROJP, trow-jop) attempts both.

It mostly manages it. The director is good at shock. The death of Howie is particularly shocking, especially since it happens so early on and occurs mostly in the background of a scene. I imagine it was mainly done that way so that we wouldn’t focus on it, so it would be easier to do the effects for as you wouldn’t notice it’s actually a model being set on fire. It helps the scene, though. It makes it seem shocking and realistic.

It’s not always realistic. There are a few moments which make you wonder if the staff have had any training whatsoever in terms of safeguarding. It would be acceptable for one or two of them to not notice things, but none of them? It’s not as if they appear overworked or like they don’t care. Most of the staff seem like they genuinely give a shit and want to do their best; so it’s baffling to try and figure out how they can miss signs of abuse.

The lack of realistic safeguarding is not my main issue; that would be the pacing. TROJP is fifteen minutes shy of 2 hours, and it only has enough story for about half of that runtime. I know the characters are physically slow, but that doesn’t mean the film has to be. I’m not asking for an exhilarating action film, but I don’t want the film to pause because it doesn’t have a clue what it’s supposed to do. This would be a fascinating short, there’s no doubt about it. It has ambition, creativity, and solid performances.

More than solid, actually. Lithgow is a tremendous actor, and I’m sure he’ll be a fantastic Dumbledore in a tv show that I will actively try to avoid. He’s positively unhinged in his role as Dave Crealy; utterly menacing and creepy. Geoffrey Rush is great going toe to toe with him. The best moments are when the two of them share a scene and try to outperform each other.

There is one thing I absolutely loved about TROJP. Whereas most films would approach a story like this with a “Is it really happening, or is he just mad?” Jenny Penn takes a “why not both?” strategy, which is much scarier. He isn’t in full control of his mental abilities, so he (and the audience) has trouble working out exactly what is real. But some of it IS real. That mixture is terrifying to think about and to watch unfold.

As I said, there are moments where TROJP isn’t a fascinating watch. But there are also times when it’s (and there’s no other way of saying this), fucking dull. And the dull moments are just not good enough to get you through the rest of it.