Whilst “Ex Machina,” “Annihilation” and his TV series “Devs” explored dark sci-fi themes, filmmaker Alex Garland’s newest directorial feature “Men” changes things up to a different sub-genre – folk horror.
The likes of “Midsommar,” “The Wicker Man,” “Children of the Corn,” “Kill List,” “The Ritual,” “In the Tall Grass,” “In the Earth” and the recent “Wrong Turn” fit this genre which generally involves a rural setting and terror inflicted on outsiders who’ve wandered into a strange place and/or community.
The story follows a young woman (Jessie Buckley) who goes on a solo vacation to the English countryside following the death of her ex-husband. But someone or something from the surrounding woods appears to be stalking her and her simmering dread becomes a fully-formed nightmare.
Garland explains to Empire how it fits into its specific niche: “It’s the horror of rural England. It’s certain kinds of churches, certain kinds of forest – the shadows within dark green. That kind of thing.”
What’s ambitious about the film is that “Penny Dreadful” and “Skyfall” actor Rory Kinnear plays every single male character in the movie, with the exception of the dead ex-husband played Paapa Essiedu. Kinnear tells the outlet he ultimately plays nine or ten different characters who are quite distinct from each other. Yet each is something of a different archetype:
“Some are actively threatening, some of them seem fairly benign, but all of them personify different aspects of the male tendency to belittle or spite or slight.
Each one had to be as fully rounded as the next, even though some of them have a very limited amount of screen-time. The threat they represent, or their lack of self-awareness, had to come from a specific place within them.”
Garland of course shot to fame penning the script for “28 Days Later” for Danny Boyle years ago. Whilst Boyle has long insisted the film isn’t a zombie movie, Garland definitively says it is in the interview: “It’s a zombie movie. Whatever technical discrepancies may or may not exist, they’re pretty much zombies.”
“Men” will be released by A24 Films on May 20th.
