Men (2022) | 31 Days of Horror: Oct 11

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In this film, all men are created equal. Literally!

Men is one woman’s view of a world composed of the worst aspects of the male gender. It’s a beautiful and also graphic folk tale that portrays trauma and the healing aspect of nature, with a few WTF moments along the way.

Before Viewing

This film looks quite freaky given the trailer. A woman rents a house from a man who assumes she is married. She gets questioned by a clergyman that wonders why she let her husband kill himself. Walking in the woods, a man follows her out, but a constable at a local pub doesn’t believe her. These men all have the same face or at least similar features. Somehow they all seem to know some dark secrets about her life. Maybe she shouldn’t have eaten the apple.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

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After Viewing

A woman, Harper (Jessie Buckley), watches a man, James (Paapa Essiedu) fall past her window in slow-motion. He has an almost surprised look on his face. Sometime later Harper drives to Cotson, Herefordshire to a quaint little cottage in the country. The owner, Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear) meets her there and awkwardly gives her a tour. He chides her about eating an apple from the front garden. “Forbidden fruit,” he says. Harper calls her friend Riley (Gayle Rankin) to tell her about the weird owner. During the facetime call a weird glitch occurs.

In a flashback, James says that he’ll kill himself if she files for divorce, and that it will all be Harper’s fault. Back in the country, Harper takes a walk through the verdant and vibrant countryside along an old train line trail. She encounters a tunnel which she plays with her echo. Suddenly she notices a figure at the other end of the tunnel. It’s a naked man that follows her. She gets back to the cottage unharmed, but a little freaked out. In a flashback, Harper finds James dead, with a broken ankle and his left arm impaled by a point on a fence which he landed on.

On a call with Riley, Harper sees the naked man in her yard. She calls the local constabulary, and they arrive and take him away. She notices the male officer, Jimmy, bears a passing resemblance to Geoffrey. In a final flashback, James punches Harper in the face angry at her rejecting him, so she then kicks him out of the apartment. In the present, Harper visits the local church where she sees a small stone font with a strange man’s face on one side, and a naked female fertility symbol on the other. Outside she meets a young teen, Samuel, who oddly has the same face as Geoffrey. He calls her rude names when she won’t play with him.

The Vicar, who also resembles the other men in town, senses she’s in pain and offers to talk with her. Harper shares that she’s not sure if James slipped while climbing from an upper balcony to theirs or maybe he really committed suicide. The Vicar cautions her his death may have been her fault, to which she becomes disgusted and leaves. That night at the local pub, the constable tells her that the naked man was released, as there was no reason to hold him.

Harper is followed home by something that tries to get in. The arm of the naked man comes in through the mail slot so she stabs it with a knife. It becomes stuck in his forearm until the man pulls his arm backwards, bisecting his arm from elbow to fingers. Samuel shows up in her kitchen wanting to play hide and seek. The Vicar confronts her in her bedroom, claiming she put impure visions of her in his head, before he tries to rape her. She stabs him with the knife. Each man bears the same arm wound as the naked man.

She attempts to flee in her car, but runs over Geoffrey who gets up and pulls her out of the car. He chases her back to the house in the car, almost running her down. The naked man appears outside the house, now with a floral wreath around his head, and other elements of flora protruding from his skin, looking like a forest spirit of some kind. His belly is large, as if he was pregnant. He drops to the ground and gives birth to a full-grown Vicar. This process repeats with each man birthing another man she has met, until the final one appears: James. She sits on a couch with the bloody, and naked James and asks him what he wants from her. “Your love,” he replies. In a quick epilogue, a pregnant Riley arrives to find Harper sitting on steps outside. When Harper spots her friend she smiles.

“Now, I am sorry you will have to live with my death on your conscience, but it’s the truth.” – James

Unlike the previous three A24 films this week (The Witch, The Blackcoat’s Daughter, Saint Maud) Men was not helmed by a first-time writer/director. Alex Garland was already a notable director, mainly in the science-fiction genre, with Ex Machina and Annihilation. This marks his first foray fully into the realm of horror, even though his previous films had their own aspects of horror interwoven within their sci-fi frameworks. The film has traditional horror aspects, such as an unknown antagonist pursuing the heroine for unknown reasons, but Men becomes a much more metaphorical exploration of horror than traditional films. It’s personally subjective to Harper and through that subjectivity the audience experiences the horror.

The horror that comes from the events in the film is as much internal as it is external and can also be colored through the perceptions of the female protagonist. As with the other films reviewed this week, Men is led by a single female protagonist whose internal emotional state acts as a prism for the audience’s perceptions of the events that occur. It’s an unreliable narrator that explains the events from their perspective, which is tainted by past trauma (again, like the other A24 this week). Harper takes the trip to Cotson to work out some issues about the death of her husband. Primarily, did he actually jump from the balcony, or was it only an accident. Her guilt about the way that she ended the interaction with James affects her perceptions of the world and her memories of the incident. Might she have been able to patch things up with him if it weren’t for her anger? These internal questions are voiced externally by the men in the village, which adds an unnerving knowing to her interactions.

This leads to the most surreal element of the film, which is the depiction of every male character in the village all looking alike (and being played by Rory Kinnear). Geoffrey, the Vicar, Jimmy the constable, Frank the bartender, and even Samuel (with his creepy uncanny valley Rory Kinnear face) each represent some element of men, in general, or perhaps an element of James, specifically, that Harper has experienced. The obvious interactions include Samuel calling Harper names for not engaging with her (as she has previously heard from young boys in London), the gentle come-on from the Vicar placing his hand on her knee (way longer than seems comfortable or appropriate) while intimating that James’ death was her fault, and the constable downplaying her report of stalking from the naked man. The Vicar later takes things to another level by claiming Harper has put these lascivious thoughts in his head, before trying to rape her. Each man has an element of behavior that represents the worst aspects of the gender towards women, whether that’s objectifying them or treating them as less able.

The other horrific aspect of Men, at least initially, is the arrival of the naked man and his stalking. This is tied to the images on the font in the church. Additional research indicates that the male face on the front is of the Green Man a nature deity image symbolizing rebirth, and found around the world, and the female depiction on the back is Sheela na gig which is possibly a Celtic figure of a Pagan goddess representing fertility and childbirth. But even without these backstories, the imagery obviously relates to some kind of nature deity and a symbol of fertility or procreation. Harper’s initial walkabout shows numerous shots of the verdant and vibrant foliage in the country. Her retreat is as much about her getting back to nature as it is healing from her trauma. The naked man that she sees at the end of the tunnel appears to instantaneously spawn from her proximity. Maybe the world sensed that she needed something and released this character to interact with her. Or maybe it’s her eating of the apple that invited sin into the garden, as with the character of Eve from The Bible.

Garland uses a lot of metaphors in the film. Besides the above mentioned use of the village men as an external metaphor for Harper’s trauma and pain, his repeated use of the dandelion representing sexuality, resilience and healing. The plant itself reproduces asexually, generating a seedpod that matures on the plant before being set alight by the wind and generating a new plant, identical in genetics to the first. Obviously, a parallel to the graphic ending as each man gives birth to another copy of itself. But the dandelion also represents healing and resilience, two things Harper is working towards. When the naked man/tree spirit confronts her outside the home, he blows the seeds of the dandelion towards her. She inhales one of these seeds, taking some part of the plant, or of the man, inside herself. Might this internalization of some element of men be the first step in her healing and understanding? Is it also a coincidence that the dandelion is the image on her phone’s lock screen?

In the end, Harper seems almost bored with the self-spawning male character. After the third procreation, she turns away as if disinterested. Her final interaction with James is not horrific or traumatizing. It seems to come from a place of calm and peace instead. The title appears at the end of the film, and acts to separate the interaction with James from the epilogue. However the splashing of the giant word “Men” across the screen almost seems like a punchline to a joke. As in, “Men, am I right?” They’re like children. They’re insecure. They have no sense outside themselves. Because when Riley shows up, Harper seems to have been completely transformed by the events and very much okay with what has happened. It is an ending that leaves a little question still in the mind of the viewer. Is Harper really okay, or did the men do something to her? A question that each person, female or male, must work out for themselves.

Assorted Musings

• Rory Kinnear may be recognizable to many as MI6 operative Bill Tanner from the Daniel Craig James Bond films.
• The musical echo motif that Harper self-composes in the tunnel is played back to her at various moments throughout the film during her encounters with the naked man.
• Samuel wears a cheap Halloween mask of a blonde woman (possibly Marilyn Monroe). This appears to be a nod to the fact that there are no women in the village (the female officer was from outside of town), and also could represent the objectification of “perfect” women–being that they are only a mask to hide behind.