Kinnear, who plays multiple roles, is the perfect casting choice – capable of embodying genial levity and stark aggression, often within the same scene. Sometimes he’s a lank-haired vicar and occasionally his face floats awkwardly on the body of a teenager, with Garland deliberately diving into the uncanny valley. Whether Kinnear is asked to be slimy and serpentine or avuncular and jolly, he has the skill to make each of his myriad characters distinct while also ensuring they palpably come from the same root. And root is very much the right word, given the focus cinematographer Rob Hardy places on the bold, vibrant greens of rural England – not to mention the recurring motif of rebirth deity The Green Man.
Away from Kinnear’s necessarily showy work, Buckley delivers the sort of subtle, nuanced lead performance we have come to expect from her in recent years. There’s a joy to scenes in which Harper relishes the escapism provided by the uncomplicated sounds and sights of nature, as if grounding herself in the world again – a contrast to the sterile, forbidding London we glimpse in flashbacks to her married life. Buckley exudes warmth, but there’s a steel to Harper – a clear manifestation of the walls she has built to protect herself from the trauma of her recent past. It’s a mature and controlled performance, but Buckley is also unafraid to provide a note of ‘scream queen’ histrionics when the time comes and she’s retreating through the claustrophobic confines of a blood-red corridor.
Like much of the best horror cinema over the years, Men marries intellectual stimulation and psychological terror with full-blooded, grotesque thrills. The film is another home run for Garland as a writer-director with real intelligence and punch, not to mention a surprising undercurrent of dark humour to offset the intensity of its subject matter. While the movie initially seems to slot into the squirm-inducing category of “elevated horror”, it nods its head liberally to the chaotic, latex monstrosities of the 1980s as much as the genre’s modern touchstones. While some more recent filmmakers seem almost fearful of their work being labelled as straight horror, Garland leans right in to provide a blood-soaked embrace for the most high and lowbrow facets of the genre.The director’s big ideas this time might not be quite as fully formed as those in Ex Machina or Annihilation, but Men certainly delivers on the satirical promise of its title. And then there’s that audacious, immediately divisive final act. It quite simply has to be seen to be believed.
Men is in cinemas from 1st June. — Thank you for visiting! If you’d like to support our attempts to make a non-clickbaity movie website: Follow Film Stories on Twitter here, and on Facebook here. Buy our Film Stories and Film Stories Junior print magazines here. Become a Patron here.
