Reviewed: Men

"Want to play a game? You hide, I'll seek."

Alex Garland's latest film is a horror that tackles misogyny and toxic masculinity. 

The film opens with Harper (Jessie Buckley) driving to a small English village to spend a fortnight recovering from a recent trauma. We see early on that said trauma involved the death of her husband but we only gradually find out more about the circumstances and their relationship as the film goes on. As Jessie spends more time in the village she meets some of it's residents who largely prove to be awful people. 

The big conceit of the film is that Rory Kinnear plays all the male characters from Geoffrey the owner of the house to the local policeman, the local vicar and even thanks to some disturbing CGI work a creepy school child. Clearly the idea is to take the "all men are the same" idea literally. It's never quite clear if this is happening in Jessie's mind- she certainly never mentions that anyone looks the same or alike. Kinnear is great in the film, turning these stock characters into more well-rounded convincing people. 

I really enjoyed the first two thirds of this film. We gradually learn Harper's backstory and see her interact with the various villagers who display varying aspects of toxic masculinity. It's fascinating that many of the characters are actually quite likeable and there are telling moments that imply Harper quite likes one or two of them but nonetheless, buried within them is a toxic man just waiting for the opportunity to come out. 

The final third of the film is much more of an outward horror film. Without going into too much detail, it's full of gory, disturbing imagery and certainly brings the fright factor. The problem is that most of this imagery is just imagery and it's pretty hard to interpret what it is saying. I've certainly got some ideas about some of the things that happen but even then it took some intense thought to tease them out. There are some things that really didn't make a lot of sense to me at all. 

That is the big problem with this film. Surely if you are going to make a film called Men and address the issues of misogyny and toxic masculinity you ought to really be saying something about it. The ending is so full of metaphor and so ambiguous that it's pretty hard to work out what Garland is trying to say. Most of the interpretations I could draw out were either nihilistic or end up being critical of women. I don't think that was the intention here but then goodness knows what the intention actually was. Similarly, the only non-white character in the film is Harper's husband and that ends up creating some disturbing interpretations which again I assume wasn't the intention- it's either racist or horribly clumsy. 

I should say that Jessie Buckley is superb in this, especially in the flashback sequences with her husband. She is so fantastic at displaying pain and the film even gives her a couple of moments to show off her musical skills.  Kinnear manages to be superbly chameleonic in his multiple roles though he doesn't get to flesh many of them out and actually serves more as a monster than a proper character in the film.  

It's also superbly well directed, really managing to achieve a eerie sense of creepiness. There's a memorable sequence once the film turns full horror that manages to perfectly combine CG and practical effects to great something really grotesque that if nothing else is an incredible achievement visually. 

Strong performances but Garland's direction is much better than his script here. If you are going to make a film about misogyny than for goodness sake address the issue rather than attempt to be clever and overuse metaphors to the point the writer is the only person that actually truly understands what they are trying to say.