There aren’t many actors who can ricochet quite like John Lithgow. He’s a gifted comedian, warm and familial, in films like “Harry and the Hendersons,” and a steely supervillain matching Sylvester Stallone blow for blow in “Cliffhanger.” He’s a Machiavellian schemer, completely unknowable, in a film like “Conclave,” and he also madcaps his way through a wacky high-concept sitcom in “3rd Rock from the Sun.”
If there’s a unifying factor in most of Lithgow’s performances it’s his almost uncomfortable intensity. When he’s the victim, he’s the saddest victim. When he’s the bad guy, he’s the meanest bad guy. When he’s given carte blanche to go mad with power, he’s Dave Crealy in “The Rule of Jenny Penn,” which may very well be his creepiest performance since Brian De Palma’s “Raising Cain” — and that’s saying something.
“The Rule of Jenny Penn” stars Geoffrey Rush as Stefan Mortensen, a particularly judgmental judge in New Zealand who collapses from a stroke while brutally chastising the mother of an abuse victim, blaming her equally for her child’s suffering. If she was any kind of a person, Mortensen believes, she’d have done something about it. This will, as first act plot points often do, be important later.
Mortensen, trying to recover from his loss of mobility, moves into an assisted living facility. It’s not one of the better ones. He shares a smoke with a pretty decent-seeming fellow and within minutes the guy accidentally immolates himself, while Mortensen stares and screams, completely helpless and horrified. This moment has nothing to do with the plot, it just sets the stage. Mortensen’s life is the kind of life where horrible, nightmare scenarios now just sometimes happen. Getting old, “The Rule of Jenny Pen” argues, is the most depressing ring of Hell.
Dave Crealy is there too, not that anybody notices. He shuffles across the building, to and fro, with a plastic baby puppet on his hand called Jenny Pen. Like most of the other residents, he’s invisible to the staff unless he makes a scene. And when people make a scene, all the attendants care about is restoring tranquility, or at least its veneer. They don’t even have the dignity of being treated like children. They’re neglected animals, fed and bathed, never interacted with except to point a finger and yell “Bad!”
But here’s the thing about Dave Crealy. He knows he’s invisible. He loves being invisible. Because at night, when the staff stops giving a crap, he’s free to wander the halls and sneak into the other resident’s rooms. He tortures and abuses them, utterly free to indulge in his wicked fantasies. “Who rules?” he asks his victims. And when they say “Jenny Pen,” the humiliation continues.
John Lithgow isn’t just terrifying in “The Rule of Jenny Pen.” He’s… offensive. Dave Crealy’s existence is an affront to human decency. At the end of his life, when everyone else his age starts giving up, he’s found his true, evil purpose? That’s a dirty joke to Dave and a cruel joke on everybody else. Watching Cleary prance and leer and mug is a demonic clown show, and now that Mortensen is here with his pretensions to moral superiority and intellectual dignity, Cleary finally has the perfect audience. He doesn’t even spend most of this story torturing the protagonist, at least not directly. He tortures the people around him, making Mortensen feel small and helpless, tossing every idea he ever had about his self-worth down the toilet.
James Ashcroft directs “The Rule of Jenny Pen” with a depressing eye for dull detail, because we’re trapped in a dull world with empty rooms and empty hallways, a liminal space where people become stuck for a while, then die and make room for another. No need to get settled here. Just stay put and don’t bother anyone until you die. The film’s few surreal moments are clearly in Mortensen’s head but that doesn’t make them any less frightening. The giant doll’s head that rises behind Cleary is unholy and wrong.
Geoffrey Rush has to maintain his dignity while Lithgow puts on his twisted freakshow, and the ego that informs his psychological defense is shattered throughout the film, leaving behind — if anything — a changed man, if only at the last minute. It’s a confined, melancholic performance that plays out in trembles and twitches, tiny movements that betray his horror, and give Cleary the ammunition he needs to keep firing.
“The Rule of Jenny Pen” is an unpleasant feature. Thank goodness, because with a story and a villain like this, any other approach could have been wretched. The film’s attitude about the grim futility of age, whether or not you have a monster at the end of the book, comes across long before the so-called “horror” begins properly. James Ashcroft’s film doesn’t just make you scared of John Lithgow, it makes you scared of the future, where an abusive imp like Dave Cleary could await you, pervert your last days on Earth, and convince you that nobody even cares.
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