Originally making a splash at last year’s Fantastic Fest, The Rule Of jennypen stood out among the crowd for featuring two lead actors with Oscar nominations. So, Fantastic Fest took notice, and the movie won the acting prize for stars Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow. Then, it became a Shudder title, which led to any possible audio description appearances might be spotty. I’m unaware of any existing audio description for this, as not every Shudder title receives it, and having watched it without, I would say to blind and low-vision users, that it is unwatchable without it.

The film centers around a judge (rush) who suffers a stroke, and then has to be rehabilitated in a nursing home. When he gets there, he still very much has his wits about him, but his body doesn’t always do what he would like it to do. this is a problem, because one of the residents (Lithgow) is a sadistic asshole, and somehow manages to slide around the nursing home staff and torture fellow residents… while he has a puppet named Jennypen on his hand. There’s an interesting dynamic here, where Rush seems to have a much higher opinion of his own abilities than what he really has, and the film shows that juxtaposition, where he seems to be doing well, but then we are reminded that the stroke did a number on him.

I think a nursing home thriller is a great location. Too many people believe the staff would have noticed, but as someone who grew up going to nursing homes on a regular basis due to grandparents, I’m very familiar with staffing shortages, and elderly abuse. I actually appreciate a more realistic viewpoint of nursing homes, since they aren’t all like the one that Ted Danson checks into on Man On the Inside. Some of them suck. This one doesn’t even go full out, with the nursing home staff being mean or incompetent, it just requires you to believe they wouldn’t pay attention to Lithgow. And I believe, in some nursing homes, they wouldn’t.

I’d be interested to see this with audio description, but it isn’t available in the Apple Store, and AMC Plus doesn’t support it. So for now, this just seems like a good idea with two fantastic actors.

Unwatchable Due To Lack Of Audio Description