MenEvery garden is a jungle. Men is a psychological horror/thriller about a woman named Harper Marlowe (Jessie Buckley), recently widowed and looking to relax in the countryside in a lovely rental cottage. The owner of the cottage is a older fellow by the name of Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear), who--while amiable enough--carries this air of ever so slight condescension when he speaks to Harper. As Harper tries to process her grief over the suicide of her late husband, James (Paapa Essiedu), her sense of unease and terror grows following each encounter with each man she meets in the remote village of Cotson.
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Written and directed by Alex Garland, Men is both similar and different to his prior films, Ex Machina and Annihilation. While both of those films were decidedly science fiction, the weirder incidents in Men might be supernatural, if that at all. There is something unquestionably strange about both the remote English town of Cotson as well as the real reason that compelled Harper to escape her London flat for the countryside. Flashbacks piece together the fatal final day of her marriage to James, like how her decision to divorce him was met with open hostility. How James's anger scared Harper, which led to him striking her, which led to her throwing him out of the apartment...only for him to force his way into the apartment above and fall to his death in front of her eyes. She finds his battered body on the cobblestones alongside the Thames below, his left hand pierced through the center by the spike of a fence, his corpse looking like some ragdoll messiah. So obviously Harper has some psychological wounds of her own. But her drive through the countryside to Cotson is relaxed, even mellow, listening to "Love Song" by Lesley Duncan. She does not wear the face of someone who has very recently suffered this kind of trauma; she masks it, and must have done so for some time prior to the movie's start. Geoffrey--nor any of the other men in Cotson--even remotely resemble James, but each time she meets one of them, the flashbacks start coming. Her only reprieve is by way of a video chat with her friend, Riley (Gayle Rankin), who is a pal and constantly bolsters her and even tries to come to see her when she starts to feel threatened. But the town of Cotson itself seems determined to keep her a prisoner. Consider that whenever she tries to give Riley her address, her phone connection magically drops. Sure, it's a horror movie cliche, but in this movie, it contributes to another way of interpreting what's really going on: that this psychotic adventure in the rustic countryside in and around Cotson may all just be in Harper's mind.
Easily the most disarming quality of Men is in the casting, specifically how Rory Kinnear portrays every single resident of Cotson, all men. There is plenty of makeup and even CGI in making the actor appear as so many varied people, but this cinematic wizardry is really a credit to Kinnear's chameleon-like performance. Each man in Cotson is distinct...well, distinct enough to make it appear that they are actually different people. And yet, we can obviously see that this is the same actor playing all of these men, raising the better question about this casting decision: "why?" At the risk of spoiling the ending of Men, the best way to approach this movie is as one that is deeply steeped in metaphor. From the first moment that Harper arrives at the cottage, she plucks an apple from the tree and takes a bite; Geoffrey later jokes that it is "forbidden fruit". This couldn't be a more overt metaphor for the Garden of Eden unless there was a talking snake. The men of Cotson are generally in positions of authority or power, and they almost always exploit this in their interactions with Harper. Geoffrey is the landlord of the house, and generally talks to Harper as though she were an idiot or incompetent, even if he is being superficially instructive about how to avoid problems, like what not to flush due to the septic tank. A vicar who initially saves Harper from being accosted by a young punk in a Marilyn Monroe mask comes across as a receptive listener of Harper's grief. But after she opens up about her pain, he turns it back on her to make it sound like she drove James to suicide. Even a police officer who apprehended a nude trespasser tells her all-too-casually that they had to let the creep go, and all but shrugs when she expresses concern about a repeat incident arising as a result. The town of Cotson appears to be occupied exclusively by men, many of who seem to stare at Harper in all possible ways--confusion, resentment, derision, lust, condemnation, and so on. (Heck, the town's name even has the word "son" in it.) And so the question remains: why did Harper even come to Cotson in the first place? Was this really the place she thought that she would be able to decompress and take her mind off of the death of James? Unlikely; she even starts doing remote work and calls her job to check on an order on her first morning there. Also, she "accidentally" books the two week rental of the cottage under "Mrs. Marlowe", and for the briefest of moments there is a suggestion that she meant to come here with James; but would she really follow through with going to this place when she was planning to divorce him anyway? The vicar describes Harper as "haunted", and it becomes clear that whether psychological, supernatural, or a little of both, she really is haunted by the ghost of James. But Men is the kind of movie where questions only lead to more questions, an unending riddle. Did Harper still love James? Did he believe that he still loved her and that in his suicide--which seemed to be done out of spite more than despair--his spirit was somehow tied to her, resulting in a bevy of complex, semi-misandric hallucinations? As Harper stays longer and longer in Cotson, all of the terrible details of her final encounter with James echo and reverberate into a terrifying explosion of violence and terror.
Men underscores the familiar metaphor of men versus women by way of examples found in everything from poetry to religion, and is even comparable to many classical horror and thriller movies. The most pervasive of these metaphors is "The Green Man", a figure in pagan iconography meant to signify rebirth and harmony with nature, but also masculinity. After Harper flees from a mysterious figure that chases her out of an echoing tunnel from the old railway line on the outskirts of Cotson, she catches sight of a jaundiced, nude man--the same one who menaces her later at her cottage--who is later shown putting leaves and twigs in his wounds after he is released. This "Green Man" is the only other character given any kind of screen time where Harper is not present, usually just to depict him adorning himself with foliage. But the Green Man is easily the most enigmatic of the men in Cotson; he doesn't speak, and his stalking of Harper might even seem innocuous--intimidating, yes, but not necessarily threatening...until he rushes her locked door and thrusts his hand through the mail slot. In the church, there is a stone with a pair of reliefs carved into them; one of them is of The Green Man, and the other of "Sheela na gig", a female figure which has exaggerated genitalia in keeping with ancient fertility symbols. Furthermore, the vicar recites a verse from "Leda and the Swan" by William Butler Yeats, one that is full of both eroticism and menace. The myth of Leda is about Zeus transforming into a swan and raping a princess, and the vicar in this scene identifies himself as "a swan" to further intimidate Harper. The storming of the cottage at the film's climax recalls a similar scene from Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs, another film that deals with the divide between men and women, as well as country and urban life in England, and how it ultimately comes to a violent head. The juxtaposition of Harper's increasingly nightmarish experiences that may or may not be "real" with the psychological torment of a marriage falling apart recalls Robert Altman's Images; they are even both set in remote cottages in the countryside. And the reveal as to just what the men of Cotson are is something so visceral and grotesque that it seems to draw from body horror films like Takashi Miike's Gozu or especially David Cronenberg's The Brood. Ultimately, it becomes impossible by the conclusion of the film to view Harper's tribulation as something other than a manifestation of her trauma played out on the stage of a remote village, where she confronts her unresolved angst about James...and whether it is due to her own psyche or the vengeful spirit of James haunting her remains yet another question without a definite answer.
Recommended for: Fans of a psychological thriller and horror movie that is rich with metaphor and invites myriad interpretations. Men starts out innocently enough, even whimsical, but it is a slow burn that seeps its way into your subconscious and forces you into a state of unease before slamming you with a violent end.
Easily the most disarming quality of Men is in the casting, specifically how Rory Kinnear portrays every single resident of Cotson, all men. There is plenty of makeup and even CGI in making the actor appear as so many varied people, but this cinematic wizardry is really a credit to Kinnear's chameleon-like performance. Each man in Cotson is distinct...well, distinct enough to make it appear that they are actually different people. And yet, we can obviously see that this is the same actor playing all of these men, raising the better question about this casting decision: "why?" At the risk of spoiling the ending of Men, the best way to approach this movie is as one that is deeply steeped in metaphor. From the first moment that Harper arrives at the cottage, she plucks an apple from the tree and takes a bite; Geoffrey later jokes that it is "forbidden fruit". This couldn't be a more overt metaphor for the Garden of Eden unless there was a talking snake. The men of Cotson are generally in positions of authority or power, and they almost always exploit this in their interactions with Harper. Geoffrey is the landlord of the house, and generally talks to Harper as though she were an idiot or incompetent, even if he is being superficially instructive about how to avoid problems, like what not to flush due to the septic tank. A vicar who initially saves Harper from being accosted by a young punk in a Marilyn Monroe mask comes across as a receptive listener of Harper's grief. But after she opens up about her pain, he turns it back on her to make it sound like she drove James to suicide. Even a police officer who apprehended a nude trespasser tells her all-too-casually that they had to let the creep go, and all but shrugs when she expresses concern about a repeat incident arising as a result. The town of Cotson appears to be occupied exclusively by men, many of who seem to stare at Harper in all possible ways--confusion, resentment, derision, lust, condemnation, and so on. (Heck, the town's name even has the word "son" in it.) And so the question remains: why did Harper even come to Cotson in the first place? Was this really the place she thought that she would be able to decompress and take her mind off of the death of James? Unlikely; she even starts doing remote work and calls her job to check on an order on her first morning there. Also, she "accidentally" books the two week rental of the cottage under "Mrs. Marlowe", and for the briefest of moments there is a suggestion that she meant to come here with James; but would she really follow through with going to this place when she was planning to divorce him anyway? The vicar describes Harper as "haunted", and it becomes clear that whether psychological, supernatural, or a little of both, she really is haunted by the ghost of James. But Men is the kind of movie where questions only lead to more questions, an unending riddle. Did Harper still love James? Did he believe that he still loved her and that in his suicide--which seemed to be done out of spite more than despair--his spirit was somehow tied to her, resulting in a bevy of complex, semi-misandric hallucinations? As Harper stays longer and longer in Cotson, all of the terrible details of her final encounter with James echo and reverberate into a terrifying explosion of violence and terror.
Men underscores the familiar metaphor of men versus women by way of examples found in everything from poetry to religion, and is even comparable to many classical horror and thriller movies. The most pervasive of these metaphors is "The Green Man", a figure in pagan iconography meant to signify rebirth and harmony with nature, but also masculinity. After Harper flees from a mysterious figure that chases her out of an echoing tunnel from the old railway line on the outskirts of Cotson, she catches sight of a jaundiced, nude man--the same one who menaces her later at her cottage--who is later shown putting leaves and twigs in his wounds after he is released. This "Green Man" is the only other character given any kind of screen time where Harper is not present, usually just to depict him adorning himself with foliage. But the Green Man is easily the most enigmatic of the men in Cotson; he doesn't speak, and his stalking of Harper might even seem innocuous--intimidating, yes, but not necessarily threatening...until he rushes her locked door and thrusts his hand through the mail slot. In the church, there is a stone with a pair of reliefs carved into them; one of them is of The Green Man, and the other of "Sheela na gig", a female figure which has exaggerated genitalia in keeping with ancient fertility symbols. Furthermore, the vicar recites a verse from "Leda and the Swan" by William Butler Yeats, one that is full of both eroticism and menace. The myth of Leda is about Zeus transforming into a swan and raping a princess, and the vicar in this scene identifies himself as "a swan" to further intimidate Harper. The storming of the cottage at the film's climax recalls a similar scene from Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs, another film that deals with the divide between men and women, as well as country and urban life in England, and how it ultimately comes to a violent head. The juxtaposition of Harper's increasingly nightmarish experiences that may or may not be "real" with the psychological torment of a marriage falling apart recalls Robert Altman's Images; they are even both set in remote cottages in the countryside. And the reveal as to just what the men of Cotson are is something so visceral and grotesque that it seems to draw from body horror films like Takashi Miike's Gozu or especially David Cronenberg's The Brood. Ultimately, it becomes impossible by the conclusion of the film to view Harper's tribulation as something other than a manifestation of her trauma played out on the stage of a remote village, where she confronts her unresolved angst about James...and whether it is due to her own psyche or the vengeful spirit of James haunting her remains yet another question without a definite answer.
Recommended for: Fans of a psychological thriller and horror movie that is rich with metaphor and invites myriad interpretations. Men starts out innocently enough, even whimsical, but it is a slow burn that seeps its way into your subconscious and forces you into a state of unease before slamming you with a violent end.