PLOT: After the brutal suicide of her husband, a woman (Jessie Buckley) rents a beautiful home in the English countryside to grieve in peace. Once there, she’s harassed by the village’s men, all of whom seem to resemble each other.
REVIEW: Alex Garland is quickly becoming one of the most original genre voices out there. He’s one of the originators of what we now call “arthouse horror,” a genre this film’s studio, A24, has had tremendous success with. His new movie, Men, will likely play to a narrower audience than some of their breakout hits, with Garland opting to make a heady, trippy psychological thriller that emphasizes mood rather than terror. In short, it’s maybe the most A24 movie ever.
Men is a film that demands multiple viewings, as at first glance, I’m not entirely sure that I “got it” or the themes Garland was going for. It’s definitely a story about a woman who’s had a high degree of horror inflicted on her by the various men in her life, but it goes deeper than that. A week after seeing it, I’m still not entirely sure what the point of having all the men in the village being played by Rory Kinnear was. We’re shown that the man who traumatized her the worst is her late husband, played by Paapa Essiedu, and indeed he serves as a ghostly spectre throughout the film. But why does Kinnear play all the men? And are they even really men at all? I thought I had it figured out at one point, but then the head-trip ending happened and made me reconsider pretty much everything I’d seen up to then, making me wonder if I ever really got it at all?
As such, Men is definitely not a film to take literally. It is highly metaphorical and seemingly influenced by the British folk horror genre of the seventies, which included the Hammer classic The Wicker Man. Another theme that was often present in those movies was the “outsider” from the big city being tortured by this rural community. Straw Dogs is another good example of that genre, and the ending of Men seemed high reminiscent of the famous home invasion climax in that controversial Sam Peckinpah film.
It’ll undoubtedly be a controversial film and seems inevitably bound to launch a thousand think pieces. However, one thing that won’t be debated is the quality of the filmmaking or the performances. Garland’s made a beautiful film, with lush cinematography by his usual DP Rob Hardy and a terrific score by his go-to composers Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow.
Acting-wise, the film is essentially a two-hander, with star Jessie Buckley never off-screen, while, as noted before, Rory Kinnear (Penny Dreadful) plays every man in the village. This includes everyone from the aged Vicar to a naughty child. The makeup used to aid his transformations is noteworthy. Kinnear has an interesting face that makes him convincing as a wide variety of types – including a wimpy landlord, a macho cop, a salt of the earth barman, and more. The only bit that seems beyond the reach of the movie’s budget is the CGI that makes Kinnear look like a child, but I suppose the child is supposed to have a certain uncanny valley quality.
After blowing up in movies like Wild Rose, The Lost Daughter, and I’m Thinking of Ending Things, Buckley quickly became one of Europe’s most in-demand actresses, and watching this you can see why. She has tremendous presence and makes for an empathic lead, even as the film takes a wild turn in a finale that will blow some minds and send others running for the exits.
In the end, Men almost felt like too much to take in with a single viewing. It’s heavy-duty viewing that’s about as far from mainstream horror as you can get. I’m not sure I understood what I was watching half the time, but I never found it anything less than compelling, and I’d be interested in giving it another watch. It’s one of “those” movies. Some will hate it now, but maybe we’ll all consider it a classic in a decade.
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