When it comes to genre, filmmaker Alex Garland has a pretty great track record. As a writer or writer/director, his works have included the likes of “28 Days Later,” “Sunshine,” “Never Let Me Go,” “Dredd,” “Ex Machina,” and “Annihilation”.
Now he returns with “Men,” a folk horror film in which Jessie Buckley plays a woman retreating to the English countryside after her fiance’s death. Actor Rory Kinnear plays multiple male characters in the film who pose an increasingly unnerving threat.
Garland is no stranger to themes of toxic masculinity in his work, and he tells EW this film is a quite visceral work that has demands of its viewer:
“In my mind, a film like ‘Men’ is connected to a film like ‘Annihilation’. They’re very much about how you’re feeling about something. ‘Men’ is a gut-level film. I’m proud of ‘Ex Machina,’ I really love it, but it’s an intellectual film. ‘Men’ is not, I think.
A huge amount of it is about how the viewer responds to it. The film is about giving 50% of something, which could be touchstones, and the viewer is providing another 50%. If that is your response to it, I’m fascinated by that.”
Part of the reason he made it this way is he is keen to subvert expectations with the film for understandable reasons:
“I’m in my early 50s and my main problem with film tends to be feeling bored. I sort of feel like I know where this is gonna go, I feel like I’ve seen this or that sequence of events play out an unbelievable number of times. I’m hoping to disrupt that a bit. If you can just slightly mess with that, and keep them on their toes – that’s the plan, anyway.”
A24 is set to release “Men” in cinemas on May 20th, a few days after its premiere at Cannes.
Source: EW
