After suffering a stroke, cantankerous former judge Stefan Mortensen (Geoffrey Rush) finds himself trapped in a grim New Zealand care facility. But it soon transpires that there is far more to fear here than his demeaning new existence: the residents are constantly terrorised by long-term patient Dave Crealy (John Lithgow). A racist bully who expertly manipulates the care staff into believing he’s harmless, Crealy uses his therapy hand puppet – named Jenny Pen – to force his terrified fellow residents into subjecting to her tyrannical “rule”.

This deeply unsettling psychological Kiwi horror film hails from director James Ashcroft, based on a story by New Zealand author Owen Marshall. It’s a claustrophobic tale of elder-on-elder abuse, with the twin threats of dementia and Lithgow’s show-stealing performance as a monstrous psychopath guaranteed to keep you up at night.