Movie · 2025 · Horror, Thriller · 1h 44m · R · English
Curator score: 2.8/10 (41.7K ratings)
Overview
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.
Ratings
Curator score: 2.8/10
IMDb: 6.1/10
Letterboxd: 3.08/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 72%
Metacritic: 66
TMDB: 6.2/10
Director
James Ashcroft
Production
Light in the Dark Productions, Blueskin Films
Cast
John Lithgow, Geoffrey Rush, Nathaniel Lees, Maaka Pohatu, Tom Sainsbury, Ian Mune, Ginette McDonald, Holly Shanahan, Bruce Phillips, Yvette Parsons, Irene Wood, Hannah Lynch, Paolo Rotondo, George Henare, Nikki MacDonnell, Fiona Collins, Richard Chapman, Annie Ruth, Nick Blake, Ariadne Baltazar
Where to watch
Hulu, AMC+, Philo, Shudder
Curator Review
Verdict
A nasty, darkly funny elder-care horror that leans on strong performances and a memorably grotesque premise. It’s effective as a mood piece and a showcase for sadistic power games, but the script leaves some of its bigger ideas undercooked.
Best for
Viewers who like bleak, high-concept horror with black comedy
Fans of performance-driven chamber thrillers
Audiences interested in aging, bodily vulnerability, and institutional neglect
People who enjoy mean, unsettling villain portraits
Skip if
You want a tightly plotted mystery or fully explained mythology
You prefer restrained horror over grotesque humiliation and cruelty
You’re looking for a fast-paced, action-heavy thriller
You dislike films that feel more like an extended nightmare sketch than a complete narrative
Overview
The Rule of Jenny Pen is built around an excellent, immediately legible nightmare: a confined rest home becomes a battleground of humiliation, fear, and survival. The film gets a lot of mileage from the clash between dignity and degradation, and from the sight of two veteran actors turning the place into a grotesque arena of dominance. It’s creepy, funny in a very sour way, and often more disturbing for its social realism than for its shocks.
Worth noting
What lingers most is the film’s sense of helplessness. The horror isn’t just the puppet or the sadistic old tyrant behind it; it’s the institution itself, the fragility of the residents, and the dread of being trapped in a body that no longer obeys you. That gives the movie a sharper edge than a standard “creepy old person” setup.
Bottom line
Still, the screenplay feels thin in places, and some viewers may wish it pushed further into either psychological depth or outright madness. As a mood piece and a showcase for ugly power dynamics, it works. As a fully satisfying story, it’s more uneven.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Tori Potenza (4.5★) · 806 likes
What if Batman and The Joker were in the same old folks home.
Rizki (3★) · 426 likes
Say all you want, but the real villains in this film are the officers — because where the hell are they? How could this crazy old man just come and go everywhere, do all of that for so long, without getting caught even once?! Are they all deadass??!! And every time they show up, it’s always at the wrong time. Let me just burn this place down once and for all.
—2025 Ranked
AClockworkCody (3.5★) · 398 likes
I have absolutely no f*cking idea what I just watched….. but I think I liked it.
For starters, the vibes this film had were like nothing I’ve had before. That easily could’ve been because our cast were 70+ years old and the setting was in a nursing home the entire time, but like what even. I guess a couple words that come to mind when describing would be incredibly creepy, awkward, tense and just down right weird.
The horror in… more