In order to recover from a traumatic event, a young woman leaves the city for a stay in the countryside. Idyllic, the house she rented there is surrounded by lush nature. What’s more, the village located a little further seems picturesque to wish. Obviously, if the heroine of the film Men (Them) had already seen a few horror films, she would know that in such a context, the worst is to be feared. From this known canvas, the director and screenwriter Alex Garland tries to create a new proposal. Mixed result for this film which was highly anticipated.
Like the protagonist of brilliant science fiction Ex MachinaGarland’s first official film (his contribution to the making of dredd is unofficial), Harper (Jessie Buckley) arrives at an isolated property that will become the scene of a veritable waking nightmare. In this respect, if one of the major inspirations ofEx Machina was Blue Beardthe one that dominates in Men is Pictures, a horror film that Robert Altman shot in Ireland in 1972 and in which Susannah York hallucinates — or not? — a menacing intruder in a country house.
This is exactly what happens in Menwith the significant difference that Harper is not in trouble with one man, but with a multitude of men.
As soon as Harper ventures into the woods for a walk, Garland begins to forge an atmosphere of muted menace, shifting from the wonderfully bucolic to the insidiously creepy. In the great tradition of folk horror (“ folk horror “), a genre not exclusive to Great Britain, but which experienced a first golden age there in the 1970s, with for example The Blood on Satan’s Claw (The night of evil spells) and The Wicker Manthen a second in recent years with, in particular, kill list and In the Earth (In the heart of the earth), Men multiplies frightening because mysterious pagan motifs.
During a break in a dilapidated railway tunnel, one thinks of some supernatural short stories by MR James and Charles Dickens (The signalman): visually, Garland knows how to do it. The filmmaker has, that said, other ambitions than simply scaring with panache. Above all, he has a speech to deliver.
Didactic approach
Thus, as in his previous Annihilation, the story is interspersed with flashbacks showing the protagonist’s difficult marital relationship. Here, we are talking about a toxic spouse, James (Paapa Essiedu), exhibiting in a single scene perverse narcissism, cognitive diversion (“ gaslighting “), infantilization, verbal and then physical violence. And as in Annihilation again, a poorly negotiated turn occurs in the third act.
Only here, even if James is no longer in the background, Harper must deal with the rest of the patriarchy (hence the title) represented by characters often holding large instances such as religion or justice: a priest making people feel guilty the wandering hand, an owner who imposes his aspirations as a knight serving, a rude teenager, a bar customer with an insistent look, a policeman who minimizes the danger denounced, a harassing stranger…
However, there is a notable particularity: apart from James, all these men are interpreted by the actor Rory Kinnear (M’s assistant in the recent James Bond films) under various prosthetic and digital make-ups. A way of suggesting that all men are the same, or “the” same? The idea is promising in theory, but in practice, Garland never manages to completely dispel a “gimmick” side.
More problematic, however, is the didactic dimension of the film. In fact, we are almost surprised to imagine Alex Garland sifting through a list of assaults and humiliations suffered by women on a daily basis, and checking off each element one by one as he places them in his scenario. All this lacks naturalness: we are more in the demonstration than in the narration. By dint of putting it, it almost seems that the director is trying to be more feminist than a feminist (doesn’t he then impose himself as a knight serving?).
Awesome Jessie Buckley
In all fairness, however, one cannot accuse Garland of posturing, since his films — and Men is no exception — always rely on a female character who outwits (Ex Machina), even transcends (Annihilation) the limits imposed on it.
By the way, Jessie Buckley, seen in The Lost Daughter (Stolen doll) and I’m Thinking of Ending Things (I just want to get it over with), is tremendously determined and pugnacious in the role of Harper. Rory Kinnear, in the plural, is also excellent. Same on the technical side: Men is superbly lit, staged and edited.
Nevertheless, it is against all odds the conventional part, with its skilfully distilled horror, which proves to be more successful than the experimental component which ends up becoming pontificating.