Jessie’s a joy but Ror y’s posh men? They’re too nice but dim
Alex Garland first came to fame as writer of the screenplay for the zombie flick 28 Days Later and the original novel for The Beach, starring Leonardo DiCaprio. More recently, however, he’s moved into directing too, delivering the cult sci-fi film Ex Machina, and Annihilation, which flopped in the States before finding new life on Netflix.
And now here he is with his third film, Men, an exemplar of the popular folk-horror genre, very much in the tradition of The Wicker Man and Midsommar. Yes, there’s something nasty lurking in our green and pleasant land… again.
The story is relatively simple, with Harper (Jessie Buckley), a young businesswoman renting in the West Country as she recovers from what striking opening scenes would suggest is the violent end to her unhappy marriage.
The house is huge and rambling – far too big for one person – but she is made clumsily welcome by its owner, the posh but thick Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear). But there’s something about the speed with which Harry Enfield’s comedy character Tim Nice-But- Dim comes immediately
to mind that is distracting. Despite the evident quality of Buckley’s performance and the layers of autumnal, Cotswold-like atmosphere, might this actually be being played partially for laughs? Unhelpfully, it’s not the last time that thought occurs, especially once it becomes clear that Kinnear is playing virtually all the male characters. Little Britain, anyone?
What is Garland, who supplies his own screenplay, trying to tell us? That all men are the same – threatening, angry, libidinous? The film is at its best when it’s on British horror ground, as Harper explores the soon sinister countryside, and has an alarming encounter with a naked man. But is he flasher, stalker or Green Man of folklore?
But those nagging doubts about humour, together with uncertainties about what it’s actually about, never quite go away.
I’ve quite enjoyed some of the films made by French director Mia Hansen-Love but Bergman Island is not one of them. For a picture with a running time of under two hours, it seems to last an eternity, as film-making couple Tony (Tim Roth) and Chris (Vicky Krieps) travel to the Swedish island of Faro, where acclaimed film director Ingmar Bergman lived and worked.
They bicker over their respective views of the great man, they sleep in the house where Scenes From A Marriage was shot and try to get on with their respective screenplays.
And then, with important feeling storylines simply petering out, a very long ‘film within a film’ begins, and I slightly lost the will to live, despite a lovely performance from Mia Wasikowska.
In Dashcam, Annie Hardy plays possibly the most annoying video blogger in the world, who travels to the UK to escape lockdown life in LA and continues to livestream just about everything she does. Which, as she’s about to fall violently out with an old friend, steal his car and give a lift to an incontinent old woman with a thirst for blood… well, it’s unfortunate, to say the least.
With horror specialist Jason Blum co-producing and Rob Savage – of Host fame – directing, it’s low-budget yucky chaos but cleverer than it looks and, at times, very funny. Keep an eye on those online comments.