Men behaving badly, yet unforgettably
Men (R16, 100 mins) Directed by Alex Garland Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★★★1⁄2
Harper is in retreat. With a marriage in pieces behind her, she has rented a grand old house in the still-shockingly beautiful and utterly unaffordable English countryside.
The house is adjacent to a village of biscuit-tin bucolicness, owned by an alcoholic lord of the manor who manages to be wheedling and oddly pugnacious, often within the same sentence.
Settling in for a promised twoweek stay, Harper heads into the nearby woods for a look around – and finds herself chased home by a middle-aged man, wordless and naked, as he prowls around Harper’s rented garden.
The police are called. At which point we might notice that the local copper seems to look almost exactly like the stalker. As does the landlord. And the various staff and regulars at the village’s charmless local pub.
Men is a nearly unclassifiable film. Writer-director Alex Garland (Ex Machina, Annihilation) appears to be verging towards a village horror, in the style of the classic The Wicker Man or 2019’s Midsommar, only to pull the rug out from under the genre and swerve into something more speculative and not entirely of this Earth.
For a few horrible moments, Garland even hints at a modernday Straw Dogs, only to thankfully pull back from that as well.
I was briefly reminded of the brilliant and bonkers Mandy at one point. And then, the last 15 minutes of Men arrived – and I slumped back in my seat, surrounded by an audience who were either retching, screaming or openly laughing at what was unfolding on the screen, while I reflected on how I do really have the best job in the world.
As Harper, Jessie Buckley (Wild Rose, The Lost Daughter) is steely, believable and a credible, relatable centre to the film, when everything around is disintegrating into bloody chaos and threatening to tip into unintentional farce.
Next to Buckley as, err, nearly everybody else, Rory Kinnear runs the gamut from pathetic to lecherous, oily and terrifying, playing the Men of the title as universally repugnant, but quite distinct characters.
Men will be a divisive film. There are some brilliant flashes here, even while I was wondering how much longer we will accept women’s fear of men’s violence as a trope to be appropriated and exploited by male film-makers.
If a woman had written Men, it might have been easier to accept as a satire. But coming from Garland, it has a whiff of self-flagellation about it, gussied up by some stunning camerawork and a gorgeous soundtrack, to appear to be a more insightful film than it maybe actually is.
But, Men is still a raucous, troubling, indelible and possibly unforgettable film. And that is probably a recommendation.
Men is screening in cinemas.