Main cast: Jessie Buckley (Harper Marlowe), Rory Kinnear (Geoffrey, Samuel, Other Men), Paapa Essiedu (James Marlowe), and Gayle Rankin (Riley)
Director: Alex Garland
Widow Harper Marlowe, apparently shell-shocked still over the suicide of her husband James, retreats to the lovely village of Cotson for some much-needed mental break. However, there she encounters men that all resemble Geoffrey, the man that owns the rented manor she is staying at.
Predictably, it is soon revealed that there is more than meets the eye behind Harper’s marriage to James, and the increasingly bizarre and even frightening, perhaps homicidal antics of the men in Cotson may be some manifestation of Harper’s inner demons. Or, maybe they are actual demons? Who knows, and honestly, who cares.
Men is one of those arty-farty “horror” movies that wants to appear profound and deep, so expect the protagonist Harper Marlowe to do plenty of blank staring and slow motion walking as the camera lingers on her, deliberately obtuse narrative structure, and ill-explained and likely nonsensical scenes and twists that I’m supposed to waste time mulling over to pretend that I find them thought-provoking.
Oh, and don’t forget the scene of violence or horror in slow motion as some cheery song plays in the background. That hasn’t been done to death already, naturally.
Really, aside from a consecutive series of body horror scenes that likely ate up the bulk of the budget of this movie, this one is all about slow-motion navel gazing.
Oh, I suppose someone can make a big statement about how this movie is an allegory for toxic masculinity or something, in order to make themselves or the movie appear smarter than they really are, but in the end, this is one movie that relies on one single scene to make an impact on the members of the audience. Everything else is just Alex Garland trying to appear brilliant and relevant while actually having little to say in the first place.
In the end, the whole thing feels like a ponderous preemptive “Please don’t cancel me, Twitter!” apology from Alex Garland for being a privileged white male, one that is quite a twat at that.
This is the present day, after all. Where once a contrite letter would do, these days, one has to virtue signal as loud as possible in front of an audience, preferably with someone else footing the bill!
