Men Parent Guide

Following the traumatic death of her husband (Paapa Essiedu), Harper (Jessie Buckley) decides that she needs a rest – two weeks quiet holiday in a beautiful manor house in the English countryside. The man who owns the property, Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear), helpfully shows her around the home, and points her towards some lovely walking trails in the nearby woods. Taking his advice, Harper finds herself experimenting with the echo of her own voice in a long tunnel under the old train tracks, when she sees a silhouette at the other end of the tunnel… ominous enough. Anxiety turns to terror when the figure begins sprinting towards her. Although she makes it back to the village, Harper is badly rattled by the experience…and there’s far worse yet to come.

If I were being generous, I might describe this as a strange film. Stingy man that I am, I think it’s probably better described as an exercise in temporary insanity. Men certainly has big ideas and fascinating concepts it wants to explore, and it does with a sense of style and purpose .…sometimes. Other times, the movie gets a little lost in the overgrown woods of its own imagination. That works once or twice, but most of the third act is deeply, deeply odd. I have to give Men a lot of credit for ambition. On the one hand, it tries to tell a very specific story in largely symbolic terms, and it gets away with it more frequently than you might expect. On the other hand, it can descend into abstractions that, absent more context, feel bizarre.

As a horror film, it works quite well. Almost from the beginning, this is a tour from the unsettling to the downright horrifying, with a few incidental stops in the unintentionally funny. Those little gaffs aside, the thoughtful and deliberate imagery on screen is captivating, elevated by a truly haunting soundtrack, and it takes advantage of the audience’s fascination to show them some insane things. Like, for example, a series of men giving birth to identical men, covered in blood and screaming, clawing towards the camera, only to be stopped by their swelling bellies, driving them to the ground to birth again. Absolutely disgusting to watch, fairly confusing to unravel, and completely unlike anything else I’ve ever seen in a theater.

Now, I don’t mean to shock you, but this is not a children’s movie. It’s barely an adult’s movie, if we’re being honest. Gruesome body horror, frequent full frontal male nudity, and a good deal of profanity are major elements of this story. Men has a specific audience in mind: adults who like weird, difficult, challenging, and frequently grotesque horror, and who don’t mind waiting around for the film’s grasp to try and catch up to its reach – even if it never quite does.