Recent big release of Shadowz and also on the program of the 24 edition of NIFFF, The Rule of Jenny Pen offers a beautiful dive into the gulf of horror... geriatric. An almost subgenus that allows its director James Ashcroft (father of already noticed Coming home in the Dark in 2021) to offer its spectator a good dose of freckle in EHPAD. A whole program!
The Titans' Shock
After being beaten by a stroke, a judge (Geoffrey Rush) is forced to abandon its independence to live in a medical residence. But as if the slow decay of his own body was not enough, he must face the manic face of another resident (incarnate by John Lithgow), who never separates from his terrifying eyeless doll, Jenny Pen.
With The Rule of Jenny Pen, Ashcroft organizes a real shock of titans by having two legendary actors confront each other on the screen. One side terrifying and cabotin John Lithgow (Dexter, Killers of the Flower Moon, Conclave...to evoke his (second) recent roles, from the other the mythical Geoffrey Rush for which you are left to go into detail the impressive list of films in which he shot as an actor. So two sacred monsters, who throw themselves away in unobvious roles to hold...
Indeed, like Demi Moore in The Substance, the two actors over 70 years old put themselves at the service of a small horrific film decidedly cruel. The dispossession of their own bodies is filmed without fail and the themes (geriatric maltreatment, mental and physical disrepitude...) are particularly harsh to embody. A suffocating dive that is not without a reminderThe Amusement Park, the medium film of Romero (re)discovered after his death...
Fire the judge
It is a question of cruelty. The Rule of Jenny Pen. And if the fire draws a strange circle linking the beginning and the end of the feature film, locking it in a circulatory defiance, it is a real game of the cat and the mouse that will unfold before our eyes. And the different protagonists move from one role to another, sometimes executioner, sometimes victim. The proud judge is lost in an asylum where he no longer controls even his own bladder, the doll with therapeutic virtues becomes instrument of torturer, the ex-star aduned of the sports world comes to suffer the repeated humiliations of a resident by curving the echinus... The roles are constantly upside down, like this defiantly despicable cat who, at the beginning of the film, enjoys his perfect freedom in front of two old people who look at him, trapped in their diminished condition of beings.
The first sequences of the film give rise to fears of an abuse of staging by the eye (these multiple half-bon effects, too full of style effects...) that will quickly fade away. Finally, The Rule of Jenny Pen Will adjust its staging to its subject and never forget its very essence: creating fear. If tension is not always mastered, Shadowz's new little nugget will create a beautiful (and sordid) horrific atmosphere and a feeling of unease that will grow until the end of the feature film. Don't miss it! And for the lucky ones participating in this 24th edition of the NIFFF in Neuchâtel, you will have the chance to discover the film on large screen in the Third Kind selection of the festival!
[...] easy to wear by the ageing casting (the same remark that was made for the film The Rule of Jenny Pen), but Kowalski manages never to be leadant and even to insert in his story of [...]