I remember the first time I saw a trailer for Men, I laughed pretty hard. It was obviously advertising itself as a horror film, but it was also rather vague with what the premise was. All I knew was that it was a horror movie and it was called Men. Right away, you can make a guess at the various political tones and themes this movie is going to have with an on-the-nose title like that. I certainly did and felt pretty vindicated about my expectations. However, I wasn’t expecting to enjoy as much of the film as I did, nor could I have anticipated the absolutely bonkers final act.

What Is It?

The film opens with Harper (Jessie Buckley) in her apartment, with a bloody nose, looking out her balcony window at a golden sunset. As she moves towards the window, everything is in slow-motion, and a folk tune that sounds like a Stevie Knicks song is playing. While she’s staring out, a man falls from the apartment above, presumably to his death, and he has a somewhat shocked look on his face. The song continues playing as Harper drives her small sedan out to a beautiful house in the English countryside. She meets the owner, Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear), for a quick tour of the place. He’s very amicable, but a little nosy. After he leaves, Harper calls up her friend Riley (Gayle Rankin), and we learn through the dialogue that she’s widowed and that she’s rented the place for a week to relax and recover from the trauma.

As you might suspect, the man who fell from the balcony was, in fact, her husband. However, this tragedy is not a simple accident. We learn through various flashbacks over the course of the movie that she was having a rather heated argument with her husband, James (Paapa Essiedu), leading up to his death. The argument was centered around the fact that she was going to divorce him. He couldn’t accept that, so he threatened to kill himself. The argument escalates in a number of ways and as the film progresses we get more flashbacks to these moments to fill in more of the details.

However, between the flashbacks, Harper is trying her best to relax by making her way around the countryside, soaking in the sights. When she remembers something from the fight she had with James, it breaks her serenity and makes her incredibly distraught. She nonetheless, powers through it all in her attempts to enjoy the peaceful scenery. Unfortunately for her, that peace is broken by something else. It first starts with a shadowy figure in a tunnel that she sees when she’s on a walk, who appears to start chasing her. There’s then a naked man in the woods who stalks her back to the house. Eventually, Harper’s mounting distress causes her to see and hear things without being certain if they’re real.

Essentially, Men is a psychological horror movie. The traumatic event of Harper’s past makes her damaged in a way that it would be reasonable to suspect she might struggle to tell what is real or not. Occasionally, when she interacts with the various men she encounters, something in the conversation feels off. To add to the surrealism of the movie, all the men in the film, other than James, are played by Rory Kinnear. He’s usually got some makeup effects or facial hair to make him appear different, but from the naked man, to the police officer who arrests him, to Geoffrey, it’s all Rory Kinnear. Harper never seems to either notice or care about this detail in a way that would make her comment on it. It’s just a stylistic choice that manages to make the film weird enough to be unsettling and to make every interaction Harper has with the men questionable in some way.

What Makes It Stand Out?

I went into Men with the expectation that I was going to dislike it, mainly due to the potential messages that its title conveyed. The movie definitely met my expectations in that regard, but I still found myself invested in what was happening.

First and foremost, the acting in Men is fantastic. Jessie Buckley and Rory Kinnear do a great job of pulling you into every scene. Kinnear is extremely good at playing different characters convincingly, using different vocal tones, accents, and vernacular to sell it. When he’s playing the vicar, he manages to create a very ambiguously sinister character with his body language and subtlety. When he’s playing Geoffrey, he comes across as goofy and polite. Jessie Buckley, likewise, manages to demonstrate her range in Men. She has many moments of quiet, intense emotions. She also has plenty of scenes in which she is screaming at the top of her lungs. Regardless of the situation, she does a phenomenal job as Harper. If the acting wasn’t as good as it was from her, I don’t think this movie would be half as compelling or interesting.

The fact that Rory Kinnear is playing every man in the movie is something that you might notice right away, even in the trailer. So you know that there is something amiss with the reality of Men. What you don’t necessarily catch from the trailer is how beautiful the movie looks. There are a lot of interesting scenes in Men that are made even better by how lighting and color are used. It’s a striking film that, in its best moments, leaves you with memorable images and shots. The golden sunset that Harper sees in her apartment provides a visual cue that we’re witnessing a flashback because the argument she’s having with James is always awash with yellow and orange. Meanwhile, the colors while she’s in the countryside are sometimes more muted, or vibrantly colorful, as though the environment is matching her emotion in the moment. The countryside is peaceful, but the color is dulled when she’s sad, while the heated argument between her and James in her apartment is vibrant in the hot hues of the sun.

Perhaps the most striking part of Men, however, is its ending. I’ll include the spoiler-filled description of what happens in an accordion below if you’re curious to see it for yourself. Just know that when I saw it, I kept asking, “What the hell am I watching?”

Worth the Watch?

Yes and no.

On the one hand, I was invested in the story of Harper and I liked the unsettling dread that is present throughout Men. The acting of Jessie Buckley and Rory Kinnear is enough to carry the film. The style and sound-design of the movie is spectacular. Had it all ended differently and given a more positive message at the end, I would be more willing to recommend it.

Ultimately, Men never really deviates from its underlying message. The behavior of James in Harper’s flashback is deplorable and can be defined as toxic and manipulative. The chivalrous behavior of Geoffrey is heavy-handedly done to make him seem patronizing and dismissive. The overt, sexually obsessive behavior of the vicar and his dialogue is intentionally animalistic and objectifying. Every man that Harper encounters is “bad” in some way, be it subtle or obvious. Men are the monsters of Men, and their toxic masculinity is the true horror that damages women like Harper, driving them to the pit of despair and insanity. At no point does the film suggest that some of the toxic behavior could be done by the opposite sex, despite the fact that there’s plenty of women in the real world who are capable of the same manipulative, mean, ugly behavior that the men exhibit in this movie.

The funny thing is, if this movie had a different title and wasn’t so on-the-nose about its message, I probably wouldn’t care as much. All the same things could have happened, but it would have just felt like a psychological horror movie with a weird ending. I wouldn’t have felt the need to pick apart the behavior of the characters so much. That being said, if it had a different title, I might not have been inclined to watch it in the first place.

I would be more willing to recommend it if there was something that happened that felt more unifying or even uplifting. Had the film shown more of Harper understanding her own faults, instead of just suggesting that it’s all men’s fault for her problems, the message of Men wouldn’t be so divisive and insulting. Or, had there been a decent man in the film that would demonstrate that not all of the male sex is terrible, that would have been sufficient to offset the mostly negative theme. Down to the final pieces of dialogue in the film, the movie is suggesting that men are so destructive, both inwardly and otherwise, that the only way for women to make peace with that, is just to accept that men are terrible.

Regardless, I can’t wait for the sequel, Women, in which a man must suffer the terror of starvation when his wife refuses to get back in the kitchen and make him a sandwich.

TL;DR

Pros

• Acting from all of the cast is really good

• Lighting and cinematography is fantastic

• Consistent sense of dread with some solid creepy moments

• Makeup effects on Rory Kinnear are good

• Flashback scenes are compelling and feel essential to the overall plot

Cons

• Various bits of symbolism at the end don’t make sense

• Ending seems more interested in shocking the audience than anything else

• Message the film is suggesting with its title and the behavior of the men in the film is very one-sided and intentionally antagonistic