The following may contain mild spoilers for Alex Garlands film Men.While his films Ex Machina and Annihilation are on the intense, thrilling side of science fiction, director Alex Garland seems to be moving closer and closer to embracing horror as the overall tone of his work. His most recent film Men is his first full directorial nightmare-inducing production. The film is inventive, terrifying, and head-scratching, but it is not Garland’s first ever crack at the horror genre. The classic zombie flick 28 Days Later was written by none other than Alex Garland himself. The film had quite the cultural impact and is considered one of the greatest zombie films of all time.
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Men is not an easy film to contextualize. It is not a horror movie in the traditional sense. There’s something to Garland’s world that we have truly never seen before. While there is an in depth look into grief and guilt, the film focuses on the unusual atmosphere surrounding the character Harper, played by Jessie Buckley. The world is grounded in our own, with true emotions and stakes we can relate to. Audiences can understand grief, which is one of the darkest and emptiest feelings we can truly comprehend. The film grounds us into that feeling before things start to get weird… and things get very, very weird.
A Real Place
A24
The film doesn’t embrace its otherworldly characteristics right away. In fact, for a while it seems very real. Harper’s quest to find solace in a secluded European village is the most grounded part of the film. We are moving with her, in real time, and finding out things as she does. We are completely in the present moment, which is slightly unsettling. There are no hints given as to what is coming next, so we are forced to take these long strolls with Harper through the colorful woods… until she finds him.
The Green Man in the woods, who’s inevitably the catalyst for the unnatural, a disturbed naked man follows Harper and invades her vacation home. Being stalked and violated is something quite real to audiences, and Buckley’s performance is one of the more realistic depictions of the fear which would result. She makes choices one would make in the real world; calling the authorities, staying away from windows, and gathering the most useful blunt object, she is as real as can be, in contrast to many overused horror clichés. These sequences are terrifying to witness, as they happen all the time in the real world.
Her and Him in Men
Men takes a very interesting turn when it comes to its character’s motives. For a while, we don’t know what they are. On the surface level, Harper is seemingly trying to cope with her grief, but something changes in her character where our entire understanding shifts. While taking the tour of her getaway home, the landowner Geoffrey shows her the piano room and asks her if she plays. Harper says no, but then later tells her friend through Facetime that she does play the piano. In fact, there is a sequence where we see Harper playing the piano like a trained professional. Why did she lie to Geoffrey? Is it her distrust in men that created this need to hide information about her truest self? In narrative purposes, this makes her an unreliable narrator from here on out.
Geoffrey as a character takes on many forms, quite literally. He is the faceless man of many faces. All of them have this eeriness about them that makes each just not fully trustworthy. From the welcoming landowner to the guilt-tripping Vicar, they all have something off about them. The decision to make every man in this film, except Harper’s departed husband James, played by the same actor (Rory Kinnear) is off-putting for us viewers. However, it doesn’t seem to affect Harper in the slightest. More confusion and unsettling emotions begin to build up as more of the men are introduced in the film.
Ambiguity, But For a Reason
Trauma and grief manifest itself in a variety of horrifying ways. The Green Man is this spiritual being who uses nature to bring forth his true self. However, the Green Man is just the introduction for what is to come. The shocking conclusion to this film is quite the jaw-dropper, but there aren’t real answers to what we are seeing. The ending scenes showcase the final clash between Harper and the surrounding men, as she comes to see the unforgettable image of one producing another, on and on. The answer to how they are all the same person is quite vividly described, but there is still a deeper question as to why. Here’s what Rory Kinnear and Jessie Buckley spoke about the exploration of grief and trauma in an interview with Inverse:
Garland’s use of ambiguity is meant to be this unsettling. There are allegories to the Garden of Eden, purgatory, and paradise, but Garland does not use these in traditional ways. This is what grounds this film mostly away from science fiction and into the mystical and horrific. Science provides answers, whether fictitious or not. But with horror, there are more ways to get into the unnatural and unknown without needing to provide answers at the moment. The horror is what leaves with you after the credits roll, and there are plenty of unforgettable moments in the final act of Men. The final shot itself begs interpretation as to what transpired.
Kinnear: “But the way [trauma] also re-announces itself in different forms. There are different triggers — particularly post-trauma — that you cannot be prepared for and that take different guises. I feel like the film chimes with me on that level most, that sense of how to repurpose the awareness that traumatic events do live with you forever, but you are in control of how you can coexist with them.”
Men’s Style
There is quite a statement Garland is making with Men. He takes his time establishing the world around Harper, and the color palette seems to be more vibrant in the village than it was in flashbacks to her urban home. It is important to note that the film’s great cinematography is one of the best in terms of the horror genre. There is an orange glow that takes hold over the scenes while she was back home with her abusive husband, James, while there are an array of colors that create a hypnotic atmosphere once Harper arrives at her getaway home. The use of light is masterful, making menace out of even bright country days.
The sound design and music choices are brilliantly used in this film as well. The tunnel sequence will be remembered as one of the highlights of the movie. Harper is quite innocently exploring the woods and comes across the tunnel leading to the unknown. She uses echoes as a symphony, but there is still something quite unsettling about the scene. We aren’t sure how we are supposed to feel, which goes back to the ambiguity and emotional rollercoaster Garland puts us on. When we see The Green Man for the first time at the end of the tunnel sequence, we know exactly how we are supposed to feel… terrified.
