The Rule of Jenny Penn (2025) will hopefully not be with you at your end
Getting old seems like a giant pain in the ass. Your body and mind fail you, your support structures become few, and someone in better shape than you will terrorize you with a plastic doll. Life in a nursing home can be hell if you don't fall in line with The Rule of Jenny Penn.
Stefan (Rush) suffers a stroke which causes him to leave his position as a judge and enter a nursing home. There he finds many difficult truths, such as the staff treating him like children and the other patients being reduced to child-like behaviors due to illness. Then he gets the attention of Dave (Lithgow), a complete nut who enjoys torturing others. The fight is on!
Right away we see that the nursing home is kinda wild. While going out for a smoke, Stefan watches a man burn alive in his wheelchair. Other patients are locked in the horrors of aging with no hope of recovery. Some find themselves with their minds empty or their bodies unable to perform simple tasks. Stefan's own stroke has left him unable to even wash himself leading to a harrowing moment when he decides to let himself sink beneath the water in a bathtub. His fight to stay alive, however, shows the resilience of a man's mind and body, as does others like his roommate Sonny (Lees), who will not alert others do Dave's torture because he does not want more pity from his family.
At the same time, Judge Stefan is pretty pompous. He quotes literature, snarks at everyone, and acts entitled to everyone. There's a peg or two that he's standing on that should be a little lower based on the fact that he seems to have no one else in his life. He is alone, and this leads to much of the growth. The catalyst for this growth is Dave, though, as good a Stephen King bully that has ever been made.
Lithgow plays Dave as maniacal. A true bastard in every sense of the word. While the horrors of aging are on full display, the horrors of Dave and that soulless Jenny Penn he has on his hand are much worse. They are a direct nightmare that comes in the night and humiliates, violates both Sonny and Stefan. With the exception of one scene of panic after a murder, Dave manipulates the staff with cold resolve. He was nothing in life and now will make everyone feel it. And that laugh and how he scarfs at his food, ewww.
The movie looks gorgeous as well. From claustrophobic tight shots to nightmarish surreal risings of baby doll heads that fill rooms, director James Ashcroft and his crew have put together a patient and unrelenting feeling of dread that strikes without mercy. As with any good storyteller, we begin to love our main character as he grows and struggles harder against our antagonist. By the end, well, satisfying is a good word for the mundanity of it all.
Lithgow deserves all the praise, still able to bring the same manic menace he had way back in Raising Cain and Ricochet. Rush is solid as ever, making the panic and horror feel real even when being smug as hell. Special shout out to Nathaniel Lees who broke my heart with a speech that ended "I don't want them to see me as something to pity."
It's a hard recommendation for most people, but if you have even heard of it then you should see this one. It was on your radar for a reason.