MEN
(director/writer: Alex Garland; cinematographer: Rob Hardy; editor: Jake Roberts; music: Geoff Barrow, Ben Salisbury; cast: Jessie Buckley (Harper), Rory Kinnear (Geoffrey), Paapa Essiedu (James), Gayle Rankin (Riley), Zak Rothera-Oxley (Samuel), Sarah Twomey (Policewoman Officer Frieda), Sonoyu Mizuno (Voice-police operator); Runtime: 100; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Allon Reich, Andrew Macdonald; DNA Films/A24; 2022-UK)
“A disturbing misogynist folk horror film“
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
A disturbing misogynist folk horror film by the Brit filmmaker, the former novelist, Alex Garland (“Civil War”/”Ex Machina”). It’s interested in exploring themes of grief and guilt in this stylish, arty and deranged thriller. It’s a muddled gender political film, with great visuals, but is a film not for all tastes. It also brings into the pic the ‘green man’ church monsters from Brit folklore, in the form of a vicar of bad faith.
I think the unclear film is about letting us see how the abuse of women by men can leave them psychologically damaged. It’s a nightmarish allegory that’s confusing, and makes for an unusual horror pic.
It tells us about a traumatized woman trying to come to terms with the death of her manipulative and abusive Black husband, even seeing him as one of the white attackers who surround her rented house, attackers who all might be the same people and projections of her twisted mind.
Garland starts the strange film off as an eerie atmospheric pic and weirdly ends it as a full-blown violent madmen gone amok supernatural horror pic in its unsatisfactory doozy of a nightmarish hallucinatory final 10 minutes.
A young woman from London named Harper (Jessie Buckley), after her husband James (Paapa Essiedu) recently killed himself by jumping off the balcony because she left him because he was abusive and manipulative, rents a quaint Elizabethan old home in the village of Cotson, on the beautiful English coast, from the British type of tweedy landlord Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear). She tells her friend Riley (Gayle Rankin) she wants to be alone for two weeks, hoping to pull herself together after her husband’s tragic death.
After settling into her vacation spot, she goes for a nature walk in the woods and discovers an old tunnel in which she sings into it and the magical sounds trigger hallucinations. She’s then followed home by a naked man, whose arrested when she calls the police but is released at the station-house.
The perv then returns with other naked pervs to surround her house. Also there are a teen with an attitude problem, a bartender and a drunken bar patron, and a mean-spirited vicar, who blames her for her husband’s fall. All the men are played by Rory Kinnear, and have something in common in this sinister setting. Meanwhile she’s having flashbacks of her relationship with her ex.
It’s a smart but confusing horror pic that’s superbly acted by Jessie Buckley and especially well-acted by Rory Kinnear while smartly directed by Garland, but with a few questionable filming decisions he makes that seem odd. The ambiguous and unsettling film implies that every relationship is different and each case deserves self-reflection to determine who is in the wrong, as not all men are abusers or all women saints. Because of its sophisticated adult content, I thought it was a superior horror pic but with obvious faults. It’s a messy film that tests your acumen to make sense of it (if that’s possible). In any case, it’s certain to leave a divided audience and a division among critics.
It played at the Cannes Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 4/26/2024 GRADE: B