Film Review: Men
Images courtesy of Roadshow Films.
This was….interesting.
The highly anticipated third film of visionary Ex Machina and Annihilation director Alex Garland seemed primed and posed to be one of the most insightful, and timely, films of the year. An alluring blend of “woke” horror and psychological disturbia ready to spark riveting conversation and horrify us with the realities women must face on a day to day basis.
Men takes place in the seemingly blissful English countryside town of Cotson, where our lead Harper (played incredibly by Queen Jessie Buckley) is taking refuge to heal and grieve over the sudden death of her ex-husband. Needless to say, not much grieving nor healing gets done. The film is told part in flashback, detailing the traumatising circumstances of her past that brought Harper to this 500 year old house in the middle of nowhere, and part in the present day, as we watch Harper interact with the various men that occupy the neighbouring village. This was a place of large disconnect for me, as following the two storylines seemed to create a narrative dissonance rather than gelling the divergent structure of the film together. Each felt like their own separate film, rather than a portion of the same one. In fact, the storyline detailing Harper’s messy fight with her soon to be ex (and dead) husband, seemed like it was only written into the film to give Garland a chance to show off even more ways he knows that men can harm women (in this case manipulation and domestic abuse).
As the film goes on it becomes increasingly clear that Garland is trying to say something, yet what exactly that something is, remains a mystery. Claims from the cast that the film is left vague purposefully only furthers the sense that in the end, Garland had no idea what he was talking about, and this realisation is chiefly what will remain in audiences minds by the film’s conclusion. As you sit there, and watch Garland’s formulaic attempt to tick everything off of the A24 checklist, you are weighed down by the overwhelming responsibility of “getting” this film, yet simultaneously caught out by its lack of substantial material. Men should be seen as a cautionary tale against trying desperately to play to the savvy, eagle eyed film audiences of today. By saturating itself with religious iconography and attempts at disturbing imagery (see: the entirety of the film’s final ten minutes) that ultimately amount to saying a whole lot of nothing, Garland’s desire to be revolutionary is all that we are left with. Both complex and vague, simply for the sake of being so.
Ironically, a film that exists to explore the anxieties, trauma and pain women experience at the hands of men, ended up putting its leading lady through an awful lot of anxiety, trauma and pain in order to convey this already obvious message. At the end of the day, this film simply becomes yet another final girl-esque horror film. Instead of setting itself apart from the countless movies in which woman’s pain and terror at the hands of evil men are centred as the entire spectacle of the film, Men ironically ends up joining them. If Garland had made the focus of the film an exploration as to why some men hate, goad, pick on, and attack women, rather than trying to write on this very specific issue which he has no real lived experience of, the film undoubtedly would have garnered the deep psychological insight that Garland was aiming for. This is not to say that a man couldn’t ever write a film on this subject, but when an ego-driven desire to simultaneously create a piece of “art” is thrown into the mix, and ultimately given priority, that is where everything, including the film’s message, inevitably falls apart.
Men is screening in cinemas from Thursday June 16th. For tickets and more info, click here.