With Hollywood studios in a skittish boom/bust obsession with franchises and superhero blockbusters, many talented filmmakers turn to horror to express ideas once explored in dramas. This welcome flowering of art house horror often begs the question is a title a genre work or an art film in werewolf’s clothing?
Alex Garland’s MEN (in theaters) is a prime and thoroughly divisive example. Depending who you ask (and it might be an internal dialogue) it’s either a stunning metaphor or a high minded, beautifully shot half measure with a whiff of pretension. For me, it’s both and best seen with a group as there’s a book club aspect that begs for debate.
Harper (Jessie Buckley) a traumatized young woman with an active imagination, decamps to a bucolic, rural estate in Cotson England after the flashback death (either by suicide or accident) of her self-pitying boyfriend. She slammed the door on reconciliation after his act of domestic abuse. The city mouse now merely needs to decompress but confronts a disquieting succession of country blokes who irritate, patronize and eventually terrorize her. These include a bumbling caretaker, who delivers exposition through comedy relief, a chauvinistic vicar and two antagonists – a 9-year-old boy and a harrowing stalker. In a nifty move, all are played by the same actor (the pliant Rory Kinnear). This directorial decision is both a testament to Kinnear’s chameleonic skills (if you group watch with an uninformed friend, guard this secret and see if your pal will even notice!) and a metaphor for how Harper may feel in general about the male of the species given her current mental state.
Sexual politics drove writer/director Alex Garland’s EX MACHINA (a sci-fi stunner about a man in love with a manipulative, AI-infused female robot) as well. With MEN, he explores these same dynamics without falling prey to the trendy social justice angles increasingly shoehorned clumsily into too many slasher horror franchises in the wake of BLM, #MeToo and the lingering, seismic influence of Jordan Peele’s GET OUT! His smartest move is casting Buckley an actor who can rev from zero to sixty in seconds on the emotive scale. (Her uncanny ability for hairpin mood shifts drove her work as a socially awkward homicidal nurse in Season #4 of FARGO and the younger version of the reluctant mother in THE LOST DAUGHTER). No shrinking violet, she stands up to all her male aggressors’ slights and threats. Are her reactions justified and even reality-based or fueled from PSTD from her boyfriend’s death?
A psychological thriller about a crack up that’s splashed with blood (and red manor walls) MEN bifurcates. The (for me) stronger first half echoes one of filmdom’s most eerie and sophisticated ghost stories about a fractured woman’s mind — Robert Wise’s THE HAUNTING. In several terrifically scary scenes, Harper encounters a woodland, naked stalker. First, he’s a speck in a long tunnel who grows larger as he chases her. Then, he appears at a sun-dappled window at daytime while Harper chats on the phone. The manic second half channels a second masterpiece of sexual fear, Roman Polanski’s visceral REPULSION. Harper faces off against a shape shifting intruder who keeps giving birth to other slimy guys in a too repetitious motif.
Gorgeously composed, MEN is visually striking (cinematographer Rob Hardy can make undulating ponds entrancing and spooky) and has so much on its mind it succumbs to creative overdrive. A burp inducing buffet of ideas, however stimulating, can sometimes overwhelm a film (the widely embraced metaverse indie EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE flirts with this and comes out on the winning side). A demanding filmgoer may appreciate MEN once and a gore hound (probably also dismayed by its soft-boiled ending) might throw his and her claws in the air and howl WTF!
Eric Lindbom is a hardcore horror buff with a strong stomach, weened on the Universal classics from the ’30s and ’40s. He’s written film and/or music reviews for City Pages, Twin Cities Reader, LA WEEKLY, Request magazine and Netflix. He co-edits triggerwarningshortfiction.com, a site specializing in horror, fantasy and crime short stories with illustrations by co-editor John Skewes. He lives in Los Angeles.
