Movie Review: Men

In typical Alex Garland fashion, Men is going to incite a lot of strong takes on both ends of the spectrum. It's a strange movie that manages to be overt and abstract with its messaging on a wide array of toxic behavior that men display towards women and how these things are weaved into the fabric of societies across the globe and culminates in a grisly final act that will likely be at the centerpiece of the vast majority of the conversations about the film. As confounding as Men has been and will continue to be, its visceral approach to horror made most of the movie work very well for me.

To set it up as simply as possible, Men tells the story of a woman named Harper (Jessie Buckley) who takes a vacation to a secluded village in the English countryside to try and get her life back on track after her husband (Pappa Essiedu) committed suicide in their London apartment. Shortly upon Harper's arrival to the village, she encounters several different men (all played by Rory Kinnear) who leave her feeling everything from slightly uncomfortable to fearful for her safety. Things escalate further in the following days when the town's priest implicates her as the reason her husband killed himself and a nude man follows her out of the woods then tries to break into her house-which sets the stage for a night of terror that will further change Harper's life forever.

Garland spoke at length ahead of Men's release about how he wanted to make it a "gut-level" movie and by all accounts, he succeeds. That's not to say the film has nothing on its mind-there's plenty of discussion to be had over its use of religious symbolism, why all the men of in the village look pretty much the same and what the meaning behind the aforementioned wild finale (and a certain not exactly human character that factors prominently into it) really is-it's just that the terror Harper is facing is coming from very visceral, internal place and Men does an incredible job of giving these fears a tangible form. 

Harper travels to this seemingly tranquil place to try and heal from the unspeakable pain she's facing, but instead she's faced with the physical embodiments of the feelings she's been haunted by. The uneasy atmosphere Garland and cinematographer Rob Hardy build with their use of silence, out of focus shots and dim yet often fluorescent-tinged lighting paired with Buckley and Kinnear's commanding performances creates a feeling of all-consuming terror that can't be escaped. It feels like a direct connection into the depths of Harper's mind as the feelings of guilt, doubt and shame that have consumed her for months are reinforced by the men in the village as they dehumanize her in a similar fashion that her late husband did. Despite being subjected to this brutal gauntlet of terror that pushes her mind and body to their limits, Harper eventually comes out on the other side of it. Grief that's coupled with abuse is an unspeakably difficult thing to live with, but once someone is able to figure out how to put a stop to the power their abusers have over them, they're able to find a freeing sense of peace within themselves that gives them the strength they need to live a life free from the stranglehold of someone that tormented them and I believe that's what Garland was implying in the brief final scene that follows the buzzy, gross-out sequence that precedes it.

While Men has more flaws than either Ex Machina or Annihilation, it does continue Garland's trend of making movies that get people talking. He's a filmmaker that values the importance of challenging an audience to interpret his work in their own way and that results in fearless films that are liberated from the sometimes-restrictive concepts of fully formed linear storytelling.  At a time where the future of the film industry couldn't possibly be murkier, directors like Garland that are more concerned with creating compelling films than perfect or easily digestible ones are more valuable than ever.     

Grade: B+