Review: Men

 

Alex Garland's latest feature heads out into rural England (the Cotswolds to be exact), and we all know what that means: it's folk horror time. But Garland is a director with more on his mind than just spooky shots of the forest - though this feels at time like he might not have fully worked out how everything on his mind fits into this particular film.

Firstly, Harper (Jessie Buckley) is haunted by the death of her husband James (Paapa Essiedu), the exact circumstances of which are spelt out in a series of flashbacks across the course of the film. All we know starting out is that he died by falling, he fell past their apartment window, and she was looking out as he dropped past. 

Second, she's now taking a break at a slightly too fancy - or at least, very large - rural rental, where the owner (Rory Kinnear) seems decent enough but, as she tells a friend, "very country". There's plenty of nice countryside to wander around in too... or at least, it seems nice until a creepy naked man (Kinnear again) starts turning up in the distance. And why does he - and every other man in the area, and there only seems to be men in the area - have the same face?

Third, there's a very sinister font in the local church (or maybe just a font with a sinister soundtrack) with a depiction of the "green man" on it, suggesting some kind of pagan past the area hasn't quite left behind. 

This seems like it should be the thread that ties everything together, but Garland isn't all that interested in explaining much of anything that's going on here, at least not on any kind of logical level. It's a horror movie titled Men: that's pretty much all you need to know to get the gist.

"Elevated horror" has a bit of a bad rep at the moment: whatever happened to just being scary? (like there aren't plenty of those movies still being made too) Men doesn't care about that - though it is scary, especially early on. It has a point to make and it's going to make it, and if it turns out that a lot of the other questions his film seems to raise are beside the point, that's your problem.

While over-explaining things is the death of creepy horror, under-explaining doesn't always work either. Taken on their own, most of the scenes here work well; the first third or so features some very tense film-making indeed. And the sense of annoyance that slowly builds is most definitely part of the point - it just means this goes from a traditional (and often very unsettling) horror movie to something a little blunter.

Men comes to a head with an extremely weird and extremely graphic - yet so surreal it hardly counts as gore - sequence that recaps the emotional thrust of the film in a handful of minutes. It's a brilliant and unforgettable ending that ends up undermining the film as a whole even as it underlines the point of it; everything leads up to this apocalyptic moment, and yet it's barely related to anything in the story beyond making the same point as everything else.

Being repetitive is at the heart of Men, and the point being made is an astute one; it just might not be one that required a 90-odd minute horror film to express.

- Anthony Morris