Nasty, vindictive, bullying, relentless… no, not a particular world leader we can’t seem to banish from our collective consciousness right now. This is John Lithgow as Dave Crealy, the care home resident from hell in Kiwi director James Ashcroft’s almost blood-free but gorgeously grotesque psychological horror.
Lithgow, arguably, was the weakest link in the fantastic Conclave ensemble (way less convincing than Fiennes, Tucci, Rossellini et al), so this is a welcome return to chilling evil, which the 79-year-old does with such gusto — see his Trinity Killer in Dexter or multiple lunatics in Brain De Palma’s Raising Cain from 1991.
However, this isn’t simply the John Lithgow Scenery Chomping Show, as we open in a courthouse with another great veteran Geoffrey Rush, 73, as judge Stefan Mortensen. In the process of sentencing a baddie, Stefan suddenly starts stumbling over his words, his speech slurring and vision collapsing into shattered fragments.
Stefan is experiencing a classic stroke, only Ashton’s cinematographer Matt Henley shoots it like the audience is having the meltdown: severe close-ups, unsteady angles, overexposed shards of light flickering like a migraine. Although it isn’t headache-inducing, just wonderfully, grimly in-your-face; and there’ll be plenty more up-close, skin-crawling, pore-gazing camera action as Stefan and Dave come to blows.
Confined to a wheelchair, Stefan temporarily moves to an old folks’ home. Omens aren’t good when one of the residents accidentally sets himself alight. And then, as another old-timer is warning Stefan not to go near a group of babbling inhabitants with hand puppets (apparently they’re therapeutic), we catch the deranged, gleefully twisted face of Dave. Of course, Dave has his own hand puppet, Jenny Pen of the title, basically a ragtag plastic doll’s head with her eyes removed.
There’s nothing too subtle about mad, bad old Dave, as we see him casually donk a woman struggling with her dementia on the skull with the head of Jenny Pen (making a blackly hilarious “ker-donk” sound). He’s clearly well into a reign of terror at the care home, which is gloriously displayed in a dance party scene; Lithgow – arms flailing, body swaying, grinning like a drunken banshee – methodically crunches the feet of the other waltzers until the dancefloor is empty.
That Stefan, a judge, won’t stand for this injustice, and that he and Dave will clash repeatedly until we reach a not entirely unpredictable ending won’t come as a shock. It’s the sadistic relish with which we get there that’s so (very much through the fingers) watchable.
Besides the unsettlingly claustrophobic cinematography, every second of dread comes with a muffled, discombobulating clatter of sound. And both lead actors are on cracking form. Lithgow is simply balls-to-the-wall bonkers, whereas Rush is resonant with outrage and laden with erudite gravitas (as befits a judge). It’s possibly Rush’s best performance since his Oscar-winning turn in 1996’s Shine.
This is as horrible, vicious and vile as any self-respecting cinema masochist could ever wish for. What Dave demands his victims do to Jenny Pen is particularly odious (but, hey, that’s why we watch these things, right?). If you were considering a move to somewhere called Royal Pine Mews Care Home, you may well think again after seeing this.
The Rule of Jenny Pen is in cinemas from March 14
