The Rule of Jenny Pen (2024)
Spooktober Challenge 2025
Premise: Geoffrey Rush, an old judge, suffers a stroke in the middle of a trial and is sent to this nursing home while he recovers. He’s kind of an asshole, a really snobbish guy. Things are not looking great: he really dislikes everyone else (and big surprise he’s not too well liked either) and more importantly “while he recovers” might be a way longer time than he thought because it looks like his condition is getting worse (he’s losing mobility, he’s clearly starting to show some signs of memory loss/dementia…)
Oh, and on top of that, John Lithgow is another old dude who has become kind of a mega bully and is literally terrorizing all the other grandpas and grandmas with the staff somehow never noticing. Oh and he carries Jenny Pen (this horrible puppet doll) everywhere because of course he does. Now he’s got his sights on the Judge.
Under 90 minutes? Nope, 114.
Do they say the title? Almost but no they don’t. Tsk.
One sentence review:
Okay, more: Yeah, this is psychological horror so no, there are no grandpas running up walls or ghosts or devils or draculas. It gets pretty overwhelming very often, you really feel helpless for the judge and it is a bit infuriating (which is kind of the point) when you see the staff not paying any attention to the early-stages-of-dementia guy. That plus it does show you pretty effectively how it must feel to well - realize you’re losing certain faculties and there’s literally nothing you can do about that. Plus, you know, the horrible jerk with the puppet.
A simple way to improve it: there are some very very jarring scenes with music that… actually, no, I liked how bonkers and crazy they were so I’m going to say, more of that. Or 15 minutes less of runtime, at some point I was surprised there was still that much movie left all things considered.
Trivia about the IMDb trivia: 
Seriously, “referenced in…” must be the most blatantly “i’m just going to plug my podcast or crappy youtube channel here” section in the universe…
