MEN

Men is an almighty mess that borders on the unwatchable, with a main gimmick as hokey as a mediocre Twilight Zone episode.

After the critical acclaim of Ex-Machina and Annihilation studio A24 probably gave Alex Garland carte blanche for his newest feature. Maybe they shouldn't have, because Men is an almighty mess that borders on the unwatchable.

The first half-hour is intriguing though, as Jessie Buckley arrives for a getaway in the English countryside to escape a recent personal tragedy and is slowly engulfed by the weirdness of her surroundings. Unfortunately Garland amps up the underlying unease a bit too much, nodding and winking at terror to come without any subtlety.

The use of the picture's main gimmick, which I will not spoil here, also falls completely flat: it's as hokey as a mediocre Twilight Zone episode and makes less sense with every passing minute.

Thus, as Men plodges towards a bonkers, Cornenbergian final act, you start to realise Garland has no real point to make beyond the fact that dressing up a predictable morality tale about grief with ponderous horror elements does not result in a good movie.

release: 2022

director: Alex Garland

starring: Jessie Buckley, Rory Kinnear, Paapa Essiedu, Gayle Rankin