The Horrors of Men

Director Alex Garland of Ex Machina (2015) and Annihilation (2018) is kind of like today’s Stanley Kubrick: he delivers suspense in a laborious yet enthralling manner, and his production designs approximate to sterile, Art Deco waiting rooms at the dentist.

Maybe more a “tech thriller” creator, Garland provides a cool, calculated horror story set in a bleak future with bleak people, bleaker cyborgs, and mutant beasts.

With his latest in Men, Alex takes us away from the antiseptic future and closer to a gothic psychodrama along the English countryside. We follow recently widowed Harper (Jessie Buckley from I’m Thinking of Ending Things and The Lost Daughter), who travels alone to a remote manor to find solitude and healing. Did I say “psychodrama?” I should have just said horror movie because this is obviously the perfect setup for no good.

Around the manor community and through the woods, dissociative personas of the same man with dominating English teeth (all played by Rory Kinnear) taunt Harper, shun her, and even streak her. Then, after 70 brilliant minutes of tension, the movie takes a turn only Hellraiser stans would applaud. I don’t want to spoil anything, but the wheels just come off.

Like overrated-by-millennials Midsommar (2019), this one throws out its crafty scrutiny of male narcissism, toxic codependency, and misogyny for cheap thrills and gore. The end result is simply out of ideas and full of fake blood, and that’s pretty much it.

To be fair, Men is a visceral experience, best conceived for the screen but maybe better imagined in the head upon reading the script. It is the stuff of Darren Aronosky’s mother! or Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things. Ever seen those? Well, you should. Or, you shouldn’t. They’re not for everyone, and neither is this movie.

I was surprised to see it at an AMC multiplex (I was the only one in the theatre) where Bob’s Burger was blaring on the left and Doctor Strange was blasting on the right. Out of the three movies, I’d still choose to see Men again over the other two, but I’m not sure if that’s saying much.

**1/2 out of *****