TLDR: Men (2022)
Rory Kinnear plays a lot of men.
Plot: In the aftermath of a personal tragedy, Harper retreats alone to the beautiful English countryside, hoping to find a place to heal. But someone or something from the surrounding woods appears to be stalking her. What begins as simmering dread becomes a fully-formed nightmare, inhabited by her darkest memories and fears.
Direction: For his third time behind the camera, director Alex Garland (Ex Machina, Annihilation) leaves the sci-fi world to enter a fantastical horror world with Men. While his last two projects were large in scope, he brings this one down to one quaint little village. He makes the move well, capturing claustrophobia in an engaging way.
Screenplay: Garland also wrote the film and his script is fine, but there’s one major problem — Everything of importance, all of the creepiest moments — are all in the trailer. Now, that isn’t Garland’s fault, of course. He didn’t cut the trailer. But if everything you need from the movie can be squeezed into the trailer’s 150 seconds, you have to ask how necessary the film’s other 95 minutes are.
Performances: Garland must love his British theatre actors. Jessie Buckley leads the film as Harper and finds herself giving a performance similar to her performance in I’m Thinking of Ending Things, (Once again, probably a script problem and not her doing). National Theatre favorite Rory Kinnear plays an Anomalisa-amount of characters, showing off his versatility. Also look out for Paapa Essiedu, another theatre practitioner (including the sweatiest Hamlet I’ve ever seen) who goes head to head with Buckley in her best moments.
Cinematography: Beautiful images perfectly juxtapose the dark storyline. These are big-screen images, no doubt. Cinematographer Rob Hardy has worked with Garland on all of his directorial projects, but I would like to shout out his work for Mission: Impossible — Fallout. He makes a lot of his projects better.
Best moment: Anything in the trailer.
Fun fact: It’s almost impossible to Google search “Men 2022 trivia” and find what you are looking for!
Imaginary accolade: Most Rory Kinnears In One Movie
Everything is too long. Is it too long? At 1 hour and 40 minutes — not really!
See it in cinemas or wait for streaming? This is a tough one. I’ll leave it up to you if it’s worth it.
Rating: Three Rory Kinnears in different makeup out of five.
Credit: Plot synopsis from Letterboxd via TMDb.
