Men written and directed by Alex Garland

(A24, 2022)

Reviewed by Josh Pearce

Men is Alex Garland’s third film as director, following two well-regarded science fiction forays (Annihilation and Ex Machina), and he has also written several other SF gems (28 Days Later…, Sunshine, and Dredd). Men, however, is decidedly fantasy. (Garland himself calls it “folk horror.”)

It stars Jessie Buckley as Harper, a recent widow renting a large country house for a couple of weeks as a place to recover from her tragedy. The owner of the house is Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear), who gives off enough creepy vibes that when he asks Harper if she plays the piano, she lies and says, “No.” Anything to avoid prolonging being in the same room as him.

The village they’re in doesn’t offer much: a church, a pub, some forest. Harper explores each. The wooded areas are shot beautifully, silently, and you can feel Harper healing in the midst of all that green. One of the best sequences of the entire film happens here, when Harper finds a tunnel and begins harmonizing with her own echoes. The unselfconscious delight and joy on her face abruptly vanish when a male figure steps out of the shadows and is silhouetted against the light at the end of the tunnel.

Someone follows her out of the woods—a naked, hairless man, also played by Rory Kinnear. When this wild man shows up in the garden of Harper’s rental home, she summons the local police (one of whom is also played by Kinnear). Further explorations take her to the church, where she finds an altar or baptismal carved with the likeness of the Green Man. She meets the vicar (Kinnear again) and a schoolboy named Samuel (Kinnear’s face digitally imposed on Zak Rothera-Oxley’s body). Both subject Harper to a slow burn of misogynistic language, leers, and lechery.

Her final stop on the village tour is at the pub, where two men played by Rory Kinnear are served by the pub owner played by Rory Kinnear. Geoffrey arrives and insists on buying Harper a drink. The police constable from before arrives and informs Harper that the Green Man has been released from jail because he didn’t really do anything wrong. Continued gaslighting and harassment forces Harper to abandon her drink and walk back to the vacation house, through a dark night in which lurkers watch her.

By this point, we the audience get it. All men are creeps. Or, perhaps, all men are the same. Kinnear’s makeup, hair, and prosthetic changes (not to mention his acting fluidity) are enough to keep one squinting and wondering, “Is that really the same guy?” The effect of seeing his face as Samuel is at first laughable, then unsettling. You start to feel, as Harper does, that you’re going a little crazy.

Up until the third act, the film is genuinely scary and well-crafted. The cinematography and establishing shots communicate a sufficient atmosphere of dread. The acting is good, with Buckley’s determination not to be run off by others’ bad behaviour apparent in the set of her expressions and body language. Harper doesn’t make any of the kind of stupid decisions that horror movie characters usually do. Throughout this, we also get a slow unravelling reveal of her husband’s death in reverse chronology, so that the inciting incident aligns with the film’s climax. This undercutting of the audience’s initial assumptions adds another layer to Harper’s plight, but it is a questionable decision to have literally the only person of colour in the entire film (Paapa Essiedu) play the most violently abusive character.

The third act is where it falls apart and, since I cannot honestly recommend the movie, I will not shy away from spoilers. After a bit of hide-and-seek excitement, a grotesquely pregnant Green Man collapses at Harper’s front door, and what follows is an extended sequence of graphic, close-up, intersex birthing scenes. The Green Man is so distended because he^* must birth a full-grown person. One after another, each of Kinnear’s characters, including Samuel, beget each other all over the lovely hardwood of the country house. The final birth—emerging this time from Kinnear’s mouth instead of a vagina—is Harper’s dead husband, James. She and he collapse onto the sofa, exhausted from the night’s events. And… scene.

Ambiguity and open-endedness is one thing; lack of focus and not knowing how to end a story is another thing. How does one interpret what we’ve just seen? It could either be an actual, supernatural being populating this village with versions of itself; or all just in Harper’s head, a product of grief, guilt, and paranoia.

The Green Man inseminates (literally, puts a dandelion seed within) Harper, and that could explain why he is able to rebirth James. If it is all in her head, then breaking Harper’s POV to show the Green Man on his own muddies the message.

More problematically, if the filmmakers’ intent is toward a psychological interpretation, then that leaves Harper as a stereotypical, hysterical woman, unable to cope with her trauma, and that entirely undercuts any feminist message the movie had been building toward. It’s a similar failing in Garland’s movies, especially Ex Machina, like a variant of the Bechdel test: Can you have a female character in your movie who is not molested or assaulted by a male character?

At the end of the day, Harper has a smile on her face, and blood on her hands—whose blood remains unclear. Other symbolism is layered on thickly: there is an apple stolen from a garden, and though the Green Man’s wounds are nothing as blatant as stigmata, there is a pierced wrist, a stab in the side, and broken legs. Are these wounds, sustained by James during his death, supposed to indicate that the men have died for their sins against Harper, and that James committed the original sin against her? Or perhaps Harper is the one committing the original sin by biting an apple, reflecting the misogynistic Biblical view that, simply by her nature, woman is responsible for the downfall of humankind. Indeed, the village vicar tries hard to lay blame on Harper for his and others’ truly horrific actions.

Men is supremely uncomfortable viewing, from start to finish. At first it is creepy, then confusing, and then it is unseemly. Last year’s The Green Knight is a far superior film about a Green Man, and has more nuanced commentary on masculinity and feminism, and a better interplay between Christianity and paganism. I recommend that whole-heartedly instead.

^*The pronoun used within the film for this character.

Review from BSFA Review 18 - Download your copy here.