Men is a haunting film with bizarre elements.

jeromereviews1994

May 26

In the aftermath of a personal tragedy, Harper retreats alone to the beautiful English countryside, hoping to find a place to heal. However, someone or something from the surrounding woods appears to be stalking her. What begins as simmering dread soon becomes a fully formed nightmare, inhabited by her darkest memories and fears.

If there's one film that I still don't know how I feel about Men is definitely that film, Men is directed by Alex Garland which is his third film. The previous two being Ex Machina and Annihilation both of which are fantastic with the former being one of my favorite films, Garland attempts to do something different here which I do appreciate. First off the performances are quite phenomenal, Jesse Buckley as always is fantastic and gives a very raw performance with a few scenes in particular that really stand out that show how truly talented she really is. Rory Kinnear also does quite fantastic here and gives one of the creepiest performances I've seen in awhile, like Buckley there's certain scenes that display his talent and the strength of his performance. The film is very well shot, showing the countryside of the United Kingdom with beautiful detail, it captures the atmosphere the film is going for very well. The last thirty minutes admittedly are going to be a situation where you are either going to absolutely love it or feel that it comes out of complete nowhere. I personally really loved the last 30 minutes mainly due to how bonkers it was plus the body horror element of it was really well done. The major problem with Men is the way it tackles misogyny and really doesn't add anything to the conversation, there's one scene in particular I thought did a excellent job of stepping into the topic. But unfortunately the rest doesn't really follow suit, you could definitely make the argument that THE WAY the movie talks about misogyny is a bit different. On the top of my head I can't think of too many slow burn horror films that have tried to talk about misogyny, but Men would have been a lot stronger had it dived deeper in the topic. Outside of that however the film itself is incredibly solid and very strange, Men is most definitely the type of film where you are going to walk out loving it or absolutely hating it. It might be Alex Garland's weakest film but it's certainly nowhere near bad, it just could have been expanded upon more to be even better.

Men is currently in theaters!

8/10 B+

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