"Men" follows a young woman vacationing in a remote English village after suffering a personal loss. Immediately upon arrival, it appears she is being followed, and she finds herself increasingly unnerved by encounters with various men in the village.
This offering from Alex Garland is a strange, at times intoxicating melange of elements borrowed from supernatural thrillers, slasher films, and even body horror. Does it work? In part, yes. The first hour of "Men" is remarkable, and I found myself utterly lost in the visuals and atmosphere. The lush countryside and its green forests are captured in such a way that both the natural beauty and the stark ominousness of the landscape are on full display. There is a protracted scene in the first act in which Buckley's character takes a stroll through the woods, and it is truly one of the creepiest, most unnerving sequences I have seen in a film. To some extent, the film plays like an emerald green version of Lars von Trier's "Antichrist"; there are even shades of "Let Sleeping Corpses Lie" present, as well as an obvious (and memorable) visual nod to Carol Reed's "The Third Man".
Garland obviously has a taste for the surreal, and it is laid on thick here in a crescendo that builds to the shocking final act. Along the way, we are offered nightmarish sequences in churches, graveyards, and abandoned buildings; symbolism of the Green Man and the Sheela-na-gig are recurring motifs set against the green (and occasionally blood red) color palette, and Rory Kinnear's multiple roles (he portrays each of the male characters featured in the film) only compound the uncanniness. The entire thing truly feels like a very bad dream, and it does it better than any film I can recall seeing in recent memory.
Unfortunately, the film gets clunky in the final act, and the back-and-forth hi jinx start to wear thin. The finale features a repulsive sequence that could be pulled from a number of Brian Yuzna or David Cronenberg features, and, though shocking, I am not sure there is enough metaphoric subtext to support such an outrageous sequence. While there is an underlying theme in which Buckley's character observes pieces of her deceased husband in each of the men she encounters, I felt the over-the-top gross out nature of the ending was somewhat unwarranted. On the bright side, however, the consummate performances from Buckley and Kinnear help maintain some believability here.
Overall, "Men" largely succeeds on the basis of its stellar photography and atmosphere, which envelops the viewer in an emerald nightmare landscape that is both gorgeous and unnerving. The all-out body horror of the final act does feel unearned, but I can say this much: You'll never forget seeing it. 7/10.
