Horror from A to 24: Men (2022)

Welcome to a new written series, Horror from A to 24, where I take a look at a horror movie released and/or produced by A24. Going in no particular order, watching whatever is available to me, and how I'm feeling. Also, I've seen a few of these before and a couple I'm in no hurry to revisit. 

Anyway, Men! Amirite?!

I didn't know anything about this going in, besides it was a little weird (now an understatement), it was made by Alex Garland, and it appeared to "have something to say". 

The movie follows Harper, a woman whose husband killed himself following a violent argument because she wanted a divorce. Harper rents a small two story cottage out in the countryside in England somewhere. She meets Geoffrey, the guy who is renting out the cottage to her. He seems nice enough if not a bit awkward. 

Harper then walks around the countryside, finding a echo-y tunnel, until she is inexplicably terrified by what appears to be a child coming toward her. Sure he's screaming but at least see WHY he's screaming.

Before she runs back to the cottage, she takes a nice panoramic picture and notices a guy very far away standing at the edge of the forest. 

Harper then putters around the cottage for a bit until she starts giving a FaceTime tour of the place to her friend Riley. Then she notices a giant naked man standing in the yard.

She calls the police and he's carted away. Then she roams around some more as we get more flashbacks to the day her husband James killed himself. They were having difficulties and she wanted to divorce him. He threatened to kill himself if she does. Then he hits her. Then he jumps off their roof and he's found dead on the ground, arm caught on a iron gate and leg broken. 

Present day, Harper comes across a kid who wants to play hide and seek and when she refuses, calls her a bitch and leaves. A vicar appears and listens to Harper's story until he says "Well yes but give him a chance to apologize for hitting you?"

Hmm....kind of a rude thing to say.

Harper then ends up at a local pub where we notice two things:

1. She's the only woman in the pub AND in town.

2. All the men are played by the same actor, Rory Kinnear.

Then you realize the vicar was also Rory Kinnear, along with the child, and the giant naked guy.

The cop that arrested the naked guy shows up to the pub and says matter of factly they let the guy go cause they had no reason to keep him. The men don't seem bothered by this, thinking he's harmless, while Harper is scared cause he followed her out of the woods. Pissed off at their lack of concern, she storms out of the pub.

And here is where I thought we'd get the point of the movie. It's called Men. All the men are played by the same actor, the cover has Geoffrey looking either menacing or cheerful, depending how you look at it. You got all these guys who are "eh" when she says a giant naked man is stalking her. And then you got James. 

We never find out what, exactly, is the strife in their marriage. We come in at the end of a conversation where Harper says she's now scared of James, he threatens to kill himself if they divorce, and then he hits her cause she won't show him her messages on her phone. 

So we got gaslighting, physical and mental abuse, and a lack of empathy all being experienced by a woman. 2022 was the time women were voicing their concerns about these things in real life and I thought Garland was going to turn these into a horror story from a woman's perspective. She's the only woman within miles. All the men look the same. They don't care about her well-being. 

(I'm gonna spoil the ending. If you wanna experience this for yourself, stop reading now. Just know it's wacky as fuck.) 

Instead, we get all the men giving birth to each other until James appears. He says he just wants to be loved. Then the movie ends.

There are some good scares as the men appear outside the cottage one at a time, seeming to threaten Harper. The vicar even makes like he's gonna fuck her but she manages to stab him before such a thing can happen. 

She does wound the giant naked guy, whose face is growing green plants now, by slicing his arm in half. And Geoffrey gets his leg broken. We then realize these are the same wounds James sustained after he landed on the ground.

So this all means something. There's deep symbolism here, but what the fuck that is, only Alex Garland seems to know. Or maybe he don't. Maybe my expectations were high for a horror movie called Men where the protagonist is a woman. The movie is weird, a bit slow, and kind of boring at times. I gave it a 1 and a half on Letterboxd. Follow me there! 

As a guy I feel weird saying this but ladies I get it now. Men was very disappointing.

-Jason