I was really looking forward to seeing "Men" after reading promising reviews but walked out of the theater feeling very disappointed.
The film starts out very promisingly. The main character Harper (beautifully played by Jessie Buckley) witnesses her husband either kill himself or possibly slip from an upstairs apartment after she informs him she wants a divorce. Dealing with immense guilt and grieving his loss, she rents a large house in the English countryside to get away from everything and get respite. The caretaker, Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear), is a peculiar character but she takes it in stride and looks forward to her time alone.
Later while walking in the woods she encounters a naked man who follows her back to the house. She calls the police when he appears to be trying to break into the residence, and they arrest him and take him away. As the film progresses there's an increasing atmosphere of dread as ensuing interactions between Harper and a series of different males become more and more bizarre. Each character seems to turn on her in one way or another, in particular a vicar who suddenly blames her for her husband's suicide. To add to the surreal, almost nightmarish vibe, every male character in the film (including a young boy, whose face disturbingly appears much older than it should be) is played skillfully by the actor Rory Kinnear.
I won't go into any further plot details but suffice to say the suspense continues to build. Then the last twenty or thirty minutes of the film suddenly take a complete turnaround with no logic or explanation of what is actually happening. It becomes a different film altogether and loses all of its creepy subtlety. It's not clear if the character of Harper is fantasizing what follows, if she's lost touch with reality or if these episodes are actually happening. If the remainder of "Men" is supposed to represent manifestations of the main character finally working through her grief and her guilt, it was very poorly imagined. Disconcertingly, "Men" abruptly turns into just another routine horror film relying on one bloody cgi scene after another, none of which are particularly original. After fifteen or twenty minutes I realized not only I had stopped caring about what was happening to the main character but I had totally lost respect for the film.
Like another reviewer here has written, I've also become really tired of watching films that directors explain away by claiming they "leave the meaning of the film up to the viewer." It's become a very lazy and self-indulgent way to avoid taking responsibility toward creating any real plot structure or logic to a film's storyline. In this case it almost looks like Alex Garland really didn't know how to conclude "Men" and just decided to rely on making some kind of an impression using the same old horror movie cgi effects we've seen so many times before. For me, it completely ruined what could have been a very good film.
The film starts out very promisingly. The main character Harper (beautifully played by Jessie Buckley) witnesses her husband either kill himself or possibly slip from an upstairs apartment after she informs him she wants a divorce. Dealing with immense guilt and grieving his loss, she rents a large house in the English countryside to get away from everything and get respite. The caretaker, Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear), is a peculiar character but she takes it in stride and looks forward to her time alone.
Later while walking in the woods she encounters a naked man who follows her back to the house. She calls the police when he appears to be trying to break into the residence, and they arrest him and take him away. As the film progresses there's an increasing atmosphere of dread as ensuing interactions between Harper and a series of different males become more and more bizarre. Each character seems to turn on her in one way or another, in particular a vicar who suddenly blames her for her husband's suicide. To add to the surreal, almost nightmarish vibe, every male character in the film (including a young boy, whose face disturbingly appears much older than it should be) is played skillfully by the actor Rory Kinnear.
I won't go into any further plot details but suffice to say the suspense continues to build. Then the last twenty or thirty minutes of the film suddenly take a complete turnaround with no logic or explanation of what is actually happening. It becomes a different film altogether and loses all of its creepy subtlety. It's not clear if the character of Harper is fantasizing what follows, if she's lost touch with reality or if these episodes are actually happening. If the remainder of "Men" is supposed to represent manifestations of the main character finally working through her grief and her guilt, it was very poorly imagined. Disconcertingly, "Men" abruptly turns into just another routine horror film relying on one bloody cgi scene after another, none of which are particularly original. After fifteen or twenty minutes I realized not only I had stopped caring about what was happening to the main character but I had totally lost respect for the film.
Like another reviewer here has written, I've also become really tired of watching films that directors explain away by claiming they "leave the meaning of the film up to the viewer." It's become a very lazy and self-indulgent way to avoid taking responsibility toward creating any real plot structure or logic to a film's storyline. In this case it almost looks like Alex Garland really didn't know how to conclude "Men" and just decided to rely on making some kind of an impression using the same old horror movie cgi effects we've seen so many times before. For me, it completely ruined what could have been a very good film.