Why is the phrase “one-hit wonder” only used for bands? I think it could be used in Hollywood, too. Director Alex Garland gave us the movie Ex Machina, which was my favorite film of 2014. In fact, I think it’s one of the best movies of the 21st century.
His second movie Annihilation (Natalie Portman) wasn’t very good. And now we have the horribly titled Men, which could have been titled “Messy Metaphors” since that’s really all it is. It’s being billed as a horror flick, and there are a few scary scenes. But it’s a mess.
Garland always does a solid job of picking locations. Ex Machina was filmed at an interesting looking hotel in Norway’s Valldal valley. This film takes place in a beautiful, sprawling estate in southwest England, with trees all around, and lining the streets.
Harper (the always great Jessie Buckley) is the young widow who found this place online and has come to unwind. She’s had a lot going on in her life lately (I won’t spoil those things). Perhaps upon arriving, she shouldn’t have plucked an apple from the tree and taken a bite, because…Eve…errr, Harper, soon sees a naked man following her around (he seems like a bit more bad news than Adam, and this is a horror movie, after all).
Actor Rory Kinnear rents her the place, and he plays every man in this small town that Harper encounters. He’s a police officer, a creepy vicar, a rude boy who wants to play hide-and-seek, bar patrons, and I believe he also played the naked dude (although I didn’t notice his face in those scenes; wait, what?!). All of these men are horrible to her. In fact, when we see her thinking about her husband (Paapa Essiedu), he’s not a peach either.
It’s a shame because, my complaint with horror movies is that they often get too gory and just rely on jump-scares. I prefer horror movies to have interesting stories (The Exorcist, The Shining, Silence of the Lambs, etc.). So there’s nothing wrong with the attempted story here. It’s just that Garland goes too artsy with this and the third act is so utterly ridiculous (uterus-ly ridiculous, which is an inside joke for those that have seen it), you’ll be grossed out, and then won’t be able to stop laughing at just how stupid it is.
This pretentious story also throws in ancient myths and stone carvings, that made me think of a few Violent Femmes album covers. Other shots made me think of a Black Sabbath album cover. The special effects were interesting, and made me think of An American Werewolf in London.
Yet with all the heavy-handed symbolism and metaphors, you just start to yawn. Instead of all the ideas Garland wants to throw at us, he should have run his screenplay by a few friends or studio heads. Did he not realize how much people hated the Aronofsky movie Mother! (Jennifer Lawrence)?
I’d love to give cinematographer Rob Hardy, a longtime Garland collaborator, some credit. He always shoots things beautifully, but I don’t think it’s hard to make the countryside here look lovely. And the slow motion dandelions in the wind, interior of a church, or rain droplets, don’t really add much to the story. I want to know if Hardy was questioning his director on if he was shooting a movie or one big allegory.
The story involving her husband could have been interesting, but we only get one intriguing scene of a fight they had.
Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow provided an interesting score (it’s yet another movie that gives us throat singing). It was also a treat to see Buckley (who we saw sing in Wild Rose) do an interesting thing with echoes in a tunnel that turned into a piece on the soundtrack (and I think may have also symbolically been a uterus). She also sits at the Baby Grand in the living room of this Airbnb and plays what I believe was Albinoni’s Adagio in G minor. Speaking of which, what kind of rating will Harper give this place? Surely future people staying there would like to know about the toxic masculinity around this 500-year-old estate, despite how delicious the apples may be.
I’m rating it 1 ½ stars out of 5. My wife thinks I’m being generous.
Side note: I’ve never used the word “uterus” in a movie review before, and used it twice here.