After Harper’s (Jessie Buckley) husband, James (Paapa Essiedu), dies by suicide, she books a two-week retreat in an old country estate to heal.  Owned by the affable yet odd Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear), he shows the grieving woman the grounds and leaves her be.  One morning she begins walking through the woods behind the house when she notices a strange man peering back at her.  Returning to the house, she is frightened to discover the man has followed her back to the estate.  This is just the first in a series of unsettling discoveries that turn what was supposed to be a refreshing escape into an absolute nightmare. 

Men is Alex Garland’s return to feature film directing, a parable of sorts about the damaging nature of toxic masculinity, released by A24.  While the film is a much simpler story and concept than his previous feature works, Ex Machina (2014) and Annihilation (2018), Men continues on the path of exponential growth in terms of imagery.  The film is a successful experiment in tone, if not in plot, as it creates a creeping sense of dread that continues to fester until it overwhelms the senses as it spirals to its terrifying conclusion at the end of its 100-minute runtime.    

Buckley’s Harper finds herself as the latest trauma-ridden heroine in Garland’s repertoire.  This troubled history with women characters is most alarming here as Men has all the trappings of a feminist narrative while still reducing its female lead to a product of trauma with little else to build her character on.  Buckley, to her credit, brings energy to the screen as she endures this series of uncomfortable and unfortunate encounters with the men of this small village where she is staying.  The script’s handling of and lack of development towards Harper is but one instance pointing towards the stumbling in the script which Garland has not been shy of stating this was an idea he has had kicking around since his career began.   

The biggest issue, however, is in the overall messaging of the film; not that it is wrong, but that it is never expanded on in any meaningful way.  The central conceit of having Kinnear play the various characters that haunt Harper is interesting, but the film never gets deeper than saying that men enable men to act poorly.  Despite the manicured imagery and overall look of the film, its message is nowhere as deep as the film would want you to believe.  From the teaser poster in the tunnel, to the carvings in the church, and the perversely poetic cutaway of the dandelion seed entering the rotten eye socket of the decaying doe giving way to maggots, there is no shortage in Men when it comes to erotically charged symbolism, but Garland also chooses to bring in a litany of biblical images to his film as well.  This inclusion further complicates the read of the film because it is now a balancing act between gender dynamics and religious influence, yet the kernel of the idea at the center of the film is never expanded on in enough detail to justify the symbolism.  Harper is clearly an Eve figure who enters this version of Eden, eating from the Tree of Good and Evil… but for what?  Why set this up if it never pays off other than to use it as a distraction from the underdeveloped thesis by dressing it up with, admittedly, beautiful mise-en-scène. 

Turning back to the performances, Kinnear pulls out all the stops in his enigmatic turn as the titular men: Geoffery, the Vicker, the stalker, and providing facial expressions for young Samuel.  Kinnear is not just swapping out wigs and costumes for these multiple roles but creates completely unique physical identities for each of these characters and this dynamism is one of the biggest hooks of the film.  Like the rest of the film, however, this multi-casting offers many possibilities of meaning but without the guidance or follow-through on the page from Garland, it does fade into the realm of gimmick quite quickly.  It is not that ambiguity is bad, and truth be told it should be an expected aspect in Garland’s films at this point, but the open-ended mysteries of his previous work are all much more realized and supported than they are here in Men.  Men is too broad and far-reaching while having very little to actually say. 

The film is a bold swing from Garland, and while the risks are admirable, they, unfortunately, do not pay off as well as one would hope.  Without entering into the debate of whether or not this is “his” – or any man’s – story to tell, regardless he does not bring anything new and of substance to the table for discussion.  In the same way that Green Book (2018) came way too late to be a platform for any meaningful discussion on race relations, Men would have had a stronger message in a pre-#MeToo era.  As it stands now, it is pretty to look at – at least until the disturbing imagery takes over in the third act – with only a surface understanding of how men perpetrate violence against women, even if they are not directly involved, as their silence in the matter sends the message to younger generations who are looking for guidance from their fathers and older brothers that this destructive and dangerous misbehavior is okay.  Garland cannot be faulted for not providing a solution to a systemic problem, but that his film ends on a note of acceptance that this is just the way things are is akin to being silent when violence is committed. Its resolution undermines what little argument was being made, and while the imagery may linger long after the credit roll, its stance is just not strong or compelling enough to be remembered, and as a story, it is more a series of encounters than a full narrative which closes the door on discussion in that way, too.