Alex Garland's MEN: Review

MEN: Review

Alex Garland’s third feature film, MEN, is a nightmare that unfolds in front of your eyes. Each scene builds on the last to become a tangled web of suspense, blood, and anger. The film itself is more concerned with mood and atmosphere than telling a linear story. This gambit on Garland’s part could topple the film but instead, it pays off in spades with the last twenty minutes transforming into a cosmic horror tragedy on a personal scale. In what starts as a rumination on one woman’s grief and pain, the film eventually becomes a reflection of our attempts at escaping our present horror. 

MEN begins with Jesse Buckley’s character, Harper, as she is attempting to vacation in a rural British countryside home. Over the course of the film, we find out that Harper is putting distance between herself and her apartment that she shared with her husband, after he fell to his death. The details around his death are unclear, whether he slipped or purposely threw himself off the building, there is no way of knowing. Both Harper and the audience are caught in a space between knowing and speculation with only seldom flashbacks to fill in the gaps. There will never be a way for Harper to know for sure, she will always be haunted by this unknowable answer. And what makes the movie shine is how much the unknown begins to spread, like a sickness in your mind. 

Jesse Buckley’s performance is compelling from scene to scene but my favorite stretch of the film is an extended, twelve-minute sequence where Harper is walking through the woods. The moments feel peaceful and serene as we accompany Harper on her journey into nature. But this serenity does not last when before long, Harper is followed by a humanoid entity. Every shot of the entity feels dream-like: as if you are only seeing them by accident, the shape appearing out of the corner of your eye. The tension is palpable when Harper decides to flee back to safety, away from the woods. There should be a respite from this creeping dread but none is provided: The Entity has followed Harper back to her home, peering into her windows and attempting to enter the house. 

All of this happens while Harper is engaged in her job, still working in what should be her time to grieve. The moment itself feels inconsequential but in the grand scheme of the film, it speaks to the current times. Pain, grief, dread, terror, guilt are all on display over the course of the film. The events of the film are fashioned to be unknowable in their horror but deeply integrated into that terror is the feeling of connection to the outside world. Harper is attempting to be alone, disconnected from her normal life but even here, there is no escape. The world will always find you, no matter how far you separate yourself from it. This comes to a head when Harper comes to realize The Entity repeatedly appears to be following her with no apparent reason or motive. And this is where the film begins to show itself, with each man in this rural town being played by Rory Kinnear, seemingly being all the same man. There is no escaping this horror because the horror is all around you, the horror follows you out of the woods, the horror greets you as the caretaker, the horror mocks your very existence as a person. 

The calculated sense of dread overflows at points when it seems that no one is not The Entity. It feels impossible and unknowable at every turn but still the horror persists. Even as Harper is stalked by each form of The Entity, she attempts to reach out to her sister to no avail. The last third of the film is truly one that needs to be seen to be believed but what works so well is the sense of unknowable horror that unfolds. Every action by The Entity is meant to hurt Harper and even more so to mock her very existence as a person. There is no logical explanation for this creature, it looks like a man, it walks like a man, it talks like a man but in the end there is no tangible answer. Harper’s only choice is to witness this horror happening in front of her. Harper cannot run, she cannot fight, she can only absorb what these men are forcing her to understand.

MEN is a strange film to say the least. The horror comes quickly and without reprieve at times in the same fashion as a fever dream. The story does not relinquish its meaning easily but for some, this will be a reward. The horror of MEN comes from a place of isolation and pain where the audience will be left pondering the ending along with the main character. I’ll be thinking about this film for weeks to come–maybe just with the lights on for a bit longer into the night.