Men (2022)

Alex Garland’s foray into toxic masculinity is a subject he’s dealt with in snippets before; he wrote the screenplay to Pete Travis’ underrated Dredd (2012) and perhaps more pertinently, in his excellent Ex Machina (2014). He’s never dealt with the subject this aggressively though. A superb Jessie Buckley is Harper, a woman who’s struggling to come to terms with the death of her abusive partner James, a man who when confronted with the end of their relationship threatens Harper with his own suicide, claiming it would be her fault. After his death, Harper takes herself to a seemingly idyllic country house in the middle of rural England to take her mind off her trauma. The film plays with various elements of the psychological and folk horror sub genres, and most striking is the fact that every male in the film is played (quite brilliantly) by Rory Kinnear. It’s a trope that works terrifically; Garland toys with the idea of all men being the same with his decision of having Kinnear in multiple roles, but it also connotes the idea that the opposite is true as well for the precise same reason. Men clearly has influences in abundance, there’s an underlying feel of a fairy tale to it, reminding me of Neil Jordan’s The Company Of Wolves (1984) and Harper’s possible flights of fantasy are similar to those of Lucy (also played by Jessie Buckley) in Charlie Kauffman’s middling I’m Thinking Of Ending Things (2020). Harper’s journey into the woods early in the film invokes Garland’s own previous film, Annihilation (2018) that although critically acclaimed, left me a tad cold despite its obvious impressiveness. What really hits you in the scenes in the woods is Rob Hardy’s stunning cinematography, which is evocatively paired with Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow’s sublime choral score. In the final third Men descends into a supernatural style home invasion, drawing comparisons with Straw Dogs (1971) and although Garland’s film isn’t quite as harshly brutal as Peckinpah’s, it doesn’t take away any of its raw bombardment. There is symbolism rife throughout the film which adds to the importance of subjectivity and interpretation by the films’ climax; what you make of Garland’s very strong film may well depend on how you read it. 7.7/10