MEN (2022)
Updated: Dec 10, 2022
A Woman's Worst Nightmares Come to Life In This Surreal Horror Flick
Grade: B
Men opens with a man falling to his death from a London flat. It ends with a horrifying phantasmagoria of gruesome and upsetting imagery. Between the two is the story of a woman who finds that even the beautiful English countryside is no escape from her past. It all amounts to a dreamlike and ambiguous horror movie that does not give a concrete explanation (or any explanation, really) as to what is going on, instead offering a relentless exercise in terror to its audiences while illustrating some common fears felt by women.
The woman in question is Harper Marlow (Jessie Buckley), who rents a house in an English village. Flashbacks illustrate a bitter domestic dispute between Harper and her husband James (Paapa Essiedu) prior to the latter's death. Flashbacks reveal James's erratic and violent behavior that led Harper to throw him out of their apartment. Despite this, she feels guilty and fears her reaction may have led him to kill himself. At first the place she has chosen for her recovery seems perfect. The house itself is nice, there are very few people around, and the surrounding area is beautiful. But strange things start to happen to make her uneasy. A man follows her out of the woods and tries to break into the house before being arrested. A creepy boy wearing a Marylin Monroe mask challenges her to a game of hide-and-seek. And a local vicar actually feeds her guilt instead of trying to help her ease it. The behavior of everyone soon becomes hostile, forcing her to fight for her life.
Men follows the popular and effective horror movie method where creepy occurrences build suspense to a hair-raising finale. Writer/director Alex Garland infuses this outline with some truly frightening moments that make Harper feel increasingly alone. One scene finds Harper facetiming her friend, not noticing a man outside her house looking in the windows. Music is wisely omitted from the first part of this segment, allowing us to feel the suspense for ourselves. The unsettling behavior the townspeople-particularly the vicar and the boy with the mask-allows the movie to get even further under the skin.
In the climax, the movie ditches classic suspense and goes for a straight-up nightmare fueled home invasion. The nature of some of the insane imagery on display makes me reluctant to describe it, but it is certain to stay in the viewers' minds long after they see it. It is unclear how much of what is happening is real and how much, if any, is just happening in Marlowe's mind. If it is real, then the townspeople are definitely not human and they are all interconnected in some way (not to mention the fact that they are all portrayed by the same actor, Rory Kinnear). If it is imaginary, then Harper is seeing her worst fears in her mind, especially her guilt.
The lack of an explanation may turn off some viewers (if the aforementioned imagery did not do that already), but it lends a dreamlike quality to the movie that gets viewers thinking, allowing us to draw our own conclusions. While recovering from the shocking finale, this reviewer realized that many of the incidents depicted in the movie are fears that many women feel: abusive husbands, stalkers, creepers, home intruders, etc. Garland expertly weaves these fears into the plot, creating a hair-raising gauntlet of horrors for Harper, and the absence of a clear-cut resolution, while undeniably frustrating, keeps them from making the movie pretentious.
The confusing ending and some of the more disgusting moments make it difficult for this reviewer to fully recommend Men. But the scares are effective, the story is engrossing and the suspense is fierce. We may never know what is happening in it, but this ambiguity is able to keep us thinking. Men is definitely not for everyone, but those who do see it will remember it for quite a while.
Director: Alex Garland
Screenplay: Alex Garland
Producers: Andrew Macdonald, Allon Reich
Cast: Jessie Buckley (Harper Marlowe), Rory Kinnear (Geoffrey), Paapa Essiedu (James Marlowe), Gayle Rankin (Riley)
Rated: R (for disturbing and violent content, graphic nudity, grisly images and language)
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