The best horror movie of the 21st century, according to Stephen King: “I urge you to watch it”
Having probably forgotten more about horror than most people will know, Stephen King has applied his knowledge and expertise on the genre well beyond the printed page, whether that’s writing movies based on his work or passing judgment on those he had nothing to do with.
If Maximum Overdrive is any indication, which it should be because it’s terrible and can only be enjoyed if viewed as an unintentional comedy, directing wasn’t his strong suit. However, selling hundreds of millions of books means he knows his way around a tightly crafted story, and an unsung gem blew his socks off.
Horror will always be a staple of cinema because it ticks a simple yet effective set of boxes. Most of them are fairly inexpensive to produce, and because audiences love few things more than being scared shitless and tossing their popcorn into the air, even the mediocre ones will turn a decent-sized profit. It’s an elemental experience, making it a real shame that nowhere near enough people saw The Rule of Jenny Pen on the big screen.
Co-writer and director James Ashcroft’s psychological chiller flew almost completely under the radar, but cult classic status is surely in its future. Given a limited release in cinemas, the film premiered to its widest audiences when it landed on Shudder in March 2025, and it doesn’t have a more famous backer than King.
Toplined by an all-too-rare leading role for the always reliable John Lithgow, Jenny Pen finds the veteran character actor as a manipulative care home resident called Dave Crealy, who presents himself to the staff as a bumbling and forgetful old man but spends his nights terrorising his peers armed with the titular hand puppet, with the equally solid Geoffrey Rush stepping up and taking a stand against his tormentor.
Shortly after its premiere at the 2024 edition of Fantastic Fest, King’s praise was glowing. “I watched one of the best movies I’ve seen this year,” he wrote on social media. “It’s called The Rule of Jenny Pen, and I urge you to watch it when it appears on Shudder.”
In microcosm, King celebrating the merits of a horror flick isn’t a big deal because it’s something he does fairly frequently. He took his Jenny Penn fandom several steps further, though, after including it as one of his ten favourite movies of the 21st century when polled by The New York Times.
It was the only one of his picks that’s a horror film through and through, depending on how much anyone wants to split hairs over Train to Busan. Sure, Yeon Sang-ho made a zombie movie, but it’s more of an apocalyptic action thriller than a conventional scare fest that relies on slow-burning tension and latent dread like Jenny Pen.
To illustrate just how much King adored it, his other eight candidates for the best since 2000 were Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down, Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men, Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby, the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men and O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, and Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, putting the lo-fi horror in some esteemed company.
