Worth: $15.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Jessie Buckley, Jessie Buckley, Paapa Essiedu, Gayle Rankin
Intro:
… while its denouement is perhaps a wee bit muddled, it’s undeniably fresh, original and strikingly memorable.
Memorable horror movies often incorporate lashings of social commentary to go along with the visceral slashings common to the genre. George Romero’s entire career was typified by this, with Dawn of the Dead (1978) in particular, a wonderfully bleak riff on consumer culture. More recently, we’ve had The Witch, Get Out, His House and Candyman (2021) bringing bulk subtext to varying degrees of success.
Alex Garland, writer/director of Ex Machina and Annihilation, brings a helping of timely social commentary to his new flick, Men, although at times the message feels mixed and occasionally downright opaque.
Men is the story of Harper Marlowe (Jessie Buckley), a young widow who decides to spend some time processing her grief at an idyllic rental property in the quaint English village of Coston. After a fairly awkward, but seemingly harmless, interaction with the property owner Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear), Harper takes a solitary wander through the lush countryside and things begin to take a turn for the surreal. Increasingly so. And by the time the end credits roll? You’re quite likely to be utterly baffled, ecstatically blown away or a strange combination of the two.
Men has a lot going for it. While the narrative is short on events, it’s wonderfully engrossing. This is due in no small part to a superb lead performance from Buckley, who after this and I’m Thinking of Ending Things is surely deserving of art film Scream Queen status. Rory Kinnear is also excellent, encompassing the role of numerous awful male archetypes and delivering his most uncomfortable (but most mesmerising) work since he rooted that pig in Black Mirror’s “The National Anthem”.
And, of course, director Alex Garland has to be given major props for delivering such a dense, atmospheric experience. He is, however, let down once again by writer Alex Garland. See, Garland is the king of the heady setups, but seems to always whiff it in the third act. Ex Machina, Annihilation (and, frankly, Sunshine and his gorgeous telly show Devs as well) all fall apart in the closing moments, to various levels of severity. Men’s ending is so bizarre, and downright Cronenbergian, that it almost gets away with it on sheer chutzpah, but it can’t help feeling a little disappointing after such strong opening acts.
That said, fans of A24, Alex Garland and what insufferable wankers call “elevated genre” are very likely to find something to love about Men. It’s slick, superbly acted, unpredictable and genuinely scary in parts, and while its denouement is perhaps a wee bit muddled, it’s undeniably fresh, original and strikingly memorable.
