Alex Garland’s Men is what happens when a “healing countryside getaway” goes so catastrophically wrong it might as well be sponsored by your therapist’s retirement fund. On the surface, it’s a surreal folk horror film about a grieving widow being tormented by a village full of uncanny men. Underneath, it’s a jagged, funny-in-a-deeply-wrong-way exploration of misogyny, guilt, and the kind of male fragility that will literally throw itself off a balcony for attention. It’s divisive, sure—but it’s also bold, unsettling, and morbidly hilarious if your sense of humor leans toward “I laugh so I don’t scream.”
A Holiday from Hell (and Marriage)
Harper Marlowe, played with raw, exposed-nerve intensity by Jessie Buckley, heads to the rural village of Cotson after her husband James dies in what may or may not be a suicide. The flashbacks drip-feed us the truth: James is emotionally manipulative, threatens to kill himself if she leaves, and hits her when she does. Then he falls from the balcony and ends up impaled on a fence like the world’s most tragic shish kebab.
It’s a brutal backstory, but Garland handles it with seriousness—and just enough dark irony. Harper isn’t some saintly widow; she’s furious, confused, traumatized, and still carrying the poisonous suggestion that his death is somehow her fault. The holiday is supposed to be a reset. Instead, it becomes one long, surreal confrontation with every awful, entitled, guilt-wielding man she’s ever known, all wearing the same face.
Geoffrey, Your Host in Hellshire
The first man Harper meets is Geoffrey, the quintessential over-polite British landlord: awkward, fussy, and just a bit too eager to please. Rory Kinnear plays him like a man who’s never met a social cue he couldn’t misread. He’s hilarious in that cringe-inducing way where you sort of want to pat him on the head and then block his number.
But Geoffrey is just the opening act. Soon the village reveals an entire lineup of men, all physically played by Kinnear: a naked stalker, a smarmy vicar, a dead-eyed cop, pub patrons, and even a disturbingly CGI’d boy. It’s not subtle—this is a one-man patriarchy show. But that’s the point. For Harper, they’re not individuals; they’re variations on a theme: invasive, dismissive, needy, blaming, threatening. It’s like scrolling through the entire male internet in one long, screaming weekend.
The Tunnel of Echoes and Red Flags
One of the film’s best sequences comes early: Harper walking through a disused railway tunnel, amusing herself by echoing little notes into the darkness. It starts playful, almost peaceful. Then a figure appears at the far end and begins sprinting toward her, screaming.
It’s a perfect encapsulation of the movie’s vibe: you’re allowed joy and quiet for about seven seconds, and then something you can’t reason with starts hurtling toward you at full speed. The scene is unnervingly tense, but there’s also a twisted humor in how fast the mood curdles—as if the universe heard Harper having fun and said, “Absolutely not.”
Folk Horror with Bark and Bite
The film leans hard into British folk horror imagery. The Green Man carvings in the church, the Sheela na gig, the lush, indifferent countryside—everything whispers of ancient cycles and old stories that predate Harper’s personal tragedy. When the naked man reappears covered in leaves, evolving into a full-on Green Man figure, it’s nature weaponized: male fertility as something predatory, invasive, and grotesquely persistent.
Garland isn’t just going for “spooky woods.” He’s plugging Harper’s private trauma into a mythic pattern, suggesting that the kind of emotional violence she endured from James isn’t new at all—it’s old as dirt, worshipped and rationalized for centuries. Comforting, isn’t it?
The Men, the Nerve, and the Nerve of Men
The horror really sinks its teeth in when the men start talking. The vicar quietly, almost gently, implies Harper is partly to blame for James’s death because she didn’t accept his apology. It’s a masterclass in weaponized empathy: calm voice, spiritual setting, underlying message of “this is kind of your fault, isn’t it?”
Likewise, the cop who shrugs off her stalker because there’s “no legal ground” to hold him might as well be an NPC from the “Women Are Overreacting” simulator. The pub patrons stare, judge, dismiss. Nobody helps. Nobody takes her fear seriously. The supernatural can be debated—but the social horror is painfully recognizable, and that’s where the humor goes acid-dark. It’s not “ha ha” funny so much as “of course he said that” funny, the kind that makes you exhale laughter just to release pressure.
Jessie Buckley: Patron Saint of Barely Holding It Together
Buckley anchors all this madness with a performance that never once feels like “horror movie screaming machine.” Her Harper is intelligent, skeptical, and understandably exhausted. Even as things spiral into grotesque body horror, she never becomes a caricature of terror. Her reactions—rage, disbelief, bitter humor, numbness—feel like someone trapped in a nightmare who still, somehow, refuses to surrender their sanity without a fight.
When she finally sits across from James again in the finale, her silence has more weight than any monologue. She’s been chased, gaslit, judged, physically threatened, and psychologically shredded, and you can see in her face: she’s done auditioning for men’s approval.
Rory Kinnear’s One-Man Horror Ensemble
It’s hard to overstate how much fun Rory Kinnear seems to be having, and how deeply unnerving that fun becomes. His ability to inhabit so many flavors of male discomfort—bumbling, predatory, lecherous, dismissive, pathetic—is the film’s secret weapon.
If the idea of “every man has the same face” sounds too on the nose, the execution saves it. Each version of him is distinct enough to feel like a separate threat, yet similar enough that you feel Harper’s sense of being trapped in a loop. It’s like watching a single virus mutate in real time.
The Birth Scene You Can Never Unsee
Let’s talk about that sequence: the Green Man, ankle broken, limping into view. Then he lies down and begins giving birth… to the boy… who then gives birth to the vicar… who gives birth to Geoffrey… who finally gives birth to James. Each process is grotesque, slimy, and drawn-out, bodies splitting and tearing as new male forms crawl out of them like a cursed Russian nesting doll.
It’s outrageous, disgusting, and darkly brilliant. Garland visualizes the idea that patriarchy and abusive masculinity are self-replicating: each man gives life to the next, each excuse births another, every injury simply regenerates into a slightly different version of the same problem. It’s also, if you’re wired a certain way, morbidly funny in its sheer audacity. The movie isn’t just leaning into metaphor; it’s swan-diving into it headfirst.
“I Want Your Love” (Of Course You Do)
When James finally appears and calmly tells Harper he wants her love, it’s almost mundane compared to the eldritch nightmare that preceded it—and that’s the point. Underneath all the horror, the cosmic birthing, the mythic imagery, lies something painfully familiar: a man insisting on emotional ownership, even after death, even after violence.
Harper’s response is simple: she doesn’t scream, or argue, or break down. We don’t even see the full conversation, just the setup and the aftermath. But the next morning, when Riley arrives pregnant—literal new life, new possibility—and finds Harper alive, bloodstained, and smiling, the movie quietly chooses not annihilation, but survival.
A24 Weirdness, but With Teeth
Men is not a movie for everyone. If you need explanations neatly boxed and labeled, you might walk away annoyed, or googling think pieces at 2 a.m. But if you’re open to horror as an experience rather than a puzzle to “solve,” there’s a lot to admire. It’s visually striking, thematically bold, and unafraid to push its metaphors to the point of discomfort.
The dark humor comes from recognition: the horror isn’t just the monsters, it’s the conversations. The blame, the entitlement, the way every male presence insists on centering itself—even in Harper’s grief. The film just takes those truths and wraps them in bark, blood, and myth until they can’t be ignored.
Final Verdict: Five Green Men Out of Five Nightmares
In the crowded landscape of folk horror and “elevated” genre, Men stands out as a beautifully deranged, deeply uncomfortable, and strangely cathartic descent into the nightmare of being a woman in a world of men who all swear they mean well. Jessie Buckley is phenomenal, Rory Kinnear is terrifyingly versatile, and Alex Garland swings for the fences with a film that might not please everyone—but absolutely refuses to be forgettable.
If you’ve ever wanted to watch patriarchy literally give birth to itself in an endless loop while a woman quietly decides she’s done playing along, Men is your twisted, gorgeous, deeply unsettling vacation destination. Just… maybe don’t book a cottage in the countryside right after.
