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Men Movie Review

Men is a 2022 horror film directed by Alex Garland and starring Jessie Buckley. It is such a bad movie that made me lost faith in this previously amazing director.

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“There’s an intruder in my garden“

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A young woman goes on a solo vacation to the English countryside following the death of her ex-husband, but something or somebody seems to stalk her there and a bunch of crazy occurrences follow. I have so much to say here, but let’s first state that ‘Ex Machina’ was in my top ten movies for the year of 2015 and ‘Annihilation’ was in my top ten for 2018. Needless to say, I am a huge fan of Garland and I find him to be a force to be reckoned with in the indie genre space.

Imagine my utter disappointment then that his newest movie Men turned out to be so bewilderingly bad. It’s one of those movies that are just bad in premise as well as the execution and probably no type of incredible execution could have saved what had always been a horrendous conceit in the first place.

Basically, what happened here is Garland going the SJW route by appealing to the snowflake critics and including all the toxic talking points that activists, especially feminists would rant about every day. The film simply states that men are bad. End of story. There is no further exploration of the human psyche and the complicated male-female dynamics. Not at all. Many men are just predators in the eyes of this director and these poor women are left on their own to try and survive in the male dominated world of sexual perversion and rape culture.

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So yes, this is the movie in a nutshell. It’s absolute social justice warrior gibberish that has no place in the actual philosophical debates because all of it can be debunked very quickly and very easily. If the script was more nuanced, I would have forgiven the movie for its other bad elements, but when you have such a terrible message along with all the visual nonsense, there is no helping it.

As for those visuals, I disliked Men even in that area. The imagery of these nude men and deformed bodies never at all creped me out. The imagery is disgusting, but never scary. It’s strange for the sake of being strange and the whole movie is a perfect example of modern horror at its worst. I like elevated horror, but here I can see why some people would hate it as it’s so self-serious and pseudo-intellectual that it comes across as highly annoying.

Are there some positive points to this film? Undoubtedly, there are some. Jessie Buckley is phenomenal here. There is no denying that her performance is outstanding and that she is a great actress, but after this film and last year’s ‘The Lost Daughter’, I do contend that she should strive to find better objects that are worthy of her obvious talents.

 Some of the imagery here is also interesting and the tunnel landscape in the beginning was especially cool. But the directing from Garland is disappointingly problematic and the movie simply never held my interest. In fact, it felt too long because of its annoying politics and ineffective horror elements.

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Alex Garland is (was) one of my favorite indie genre directors. Both Ex Machina and Annihilation ended up in my lists of top ten movies for their respective years. Imagine my crushing disappointment then with his newest movie – Men. As the title would suggest, this is such a toxic, sexist movie that pretty much reiterates all the horrendous talking points of feminists and SJWs about men with no nuance to their argument whatsoever. Jessie Buckley is great and she really needs to find better projects worthy of her talent as an actress, and the movie started off fine, but it quickly became infuriating to watch as it represents modern elevated horror at its absolute worst with its pseudo-intellectual gibberish and strange imagery that is more repulsive than ever really creepy. It is so frustrating to see such a talented director resort to appealing to the snowflake critics and reading many of these reviews made me want to vomit. When Hollywood makes a film about how both men and women are toxic and not just men, then we can talk, but until then these types of movies will continue to bomb at the box office everywhere outside of the US and deservedly so.

My Rating – 2