If “hag horror” is a thing—and with examples like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and Strait-jacketwho can deny that it is?—might there be a non-distaff version of the genre? That is, if we have genres featuring old women, former starlets, going head to head against each other, is there a genre where once strong young men stagger around as oldsters and ’cause mischief and mayhem?

This isn’t a rhetorical question. I really don’t know! Bubba Ho-Tep, maybe? Grumpy Old Men is a comedy, not really the same.

Well, if there wasn’t one before, we have the beginnings of in The Rule of Jenny Pen. A neat and nasty little horror out of New Zealand that pits John Lithgow and Geoffrey Rush against each other mano-a-mano and cato-a-mouse-o and so on.

 

Snooty Judge Stefan (Rush) has an episode whilst sentencing a criminal (and scolding the victim’s mother) and ends up in a subpar nursing home—I guess he was too honest to steal a good retirement like any sensible judge—where he falls afoul of Dave, an unstable, occasionally catatonic weirdo who has a creepy doll puppet (the titular Jenny Pen) that he uses to deal with most of life.

He’s crazy enough to be in the secure ward but, as I mentioned, it’s not the greatest old folks’ home, and Dave is well capable of getting lose and causing mischief. Which, of course, he does, or we ain’t got a picture.

We don’t ever really know why Dave decides to abuse Stefan. It could be that Stefan just happened to get as a roommate the crippled rugby player Dave was already abusing. It could be they have some forgotten history. It could just be that Dave abuses everyone if he can get away with it.

Little bits of backstory dropped here and there add some depth, but ultimately, Dave is doing it for the kicks.

 

The challenge level here is that Stefan is a grade-A jerk. Imperious, superior and prickly, and also afflicted with an unspecified neurological that causes him to lose time. So no one believes him when he accuses Dave (who knows very well how to work the system). Maori rugby-player guy could back Stefan up, but his concern for being pitied and having his productive history occluded keeps him from ratting out Dave.

Dave meanwhile goes around demanding obeisance to Jenny Pen, an eyeless doll that looms in Stefan’s warped mind like a demon.

Solid Him-Hag-Horror. (“He-Hag-Horror”? We’ll workshop it.) There are a lot of ways a movie like this can go sideways. Like, there has to be humiliation of the elderly—just enough to get the audience fired up and ready for revenge, but not so much that the audience feels like they’re watching something shameful.

 

In a situation like this where a villain is tormenting a helpless victim, the victim has to have a way to fight back that is plausible, reasonably effective (at least potentially), and preferably a clever brain-over-brawn approach. Stefan comes up with some brilliant plans which are hampered by a lot of things.

There was also a teasing of the Jenny Pen doll. Stefan’s condition imbues the doll with supernatural power, and there was a whole path to go down that the movie just didn’t. (There were moments where I was thinking it might, and also wondering how I’d feel about it if it dd.)

Ultimately, the protagonist is actually Crippled New Zealand Rugby Guy. He’s a prisoner of his own making, preferring private humiliation to public exposure (even if the latter means the end to the former). And his acquiescence has been fully spiritual: He’s afraid of Dave and Jenny Pen.

Anyway, it all works pretty well. John Lithgow (85) is now entering his 45th year playing psycho killers, and he’s just as good now as he was in Blow Out. Geoffrey Rush, at 73, is a spring chicken but isn’t going to last long because of his infirmity. They’re good playing off each other.

A tight film overall, and one that manages to create a nice, low-key sense of dread, while staying away from shock and gore. Arguably more suspense than horror.

All you nearly 29-year-olds probably have grandparents that might need to go to a home, so the movie might be educational, too!