After being nominated for an Academy Award forThe Lost Daughter, Jessie Buckley will next appear in the upcomingA24 movieMen. According to writer-directorAlex Garlandin an interview withEntertainment Weekly (EW), Men is “a horror movie about a sense of horror,” or, more simply, “a ghost story.”
Buckley will play Harper, a young widow who, following the death of her husband (Paapa Essiedu), has rented an isolated holiday home in the English countryside. The innkeeper there (Rory Kinnear) warns Harper against biting into the “forbidden fruit” on the property, and Harper can’t stop seeing his face in every resident in town, including children.
The trailer for men is filled with the feeling of danger for women being watched by men with ill-intent and the inherent paranoia that accompanies grief. And unlike some trailers that give away the plot of the whole movie, such asTerminator: Genysis, it’s not clear what’s going on with the film. According to Garland, the film’s mysterious plot is intentional.
“A huge amount of it is how the viewer responds to it,” Garland explained. “The film is about giving 50 percent of something, which could be touchstones, and the viewer is providing another 50 percent. If that is your response to it, I’m fascinated by that.”
“People feel like, ‘Oh, I know what’s gonna happen now. But if you may just slightly mess with that and keep them on their toes — that’s the plan, anyway.” Garland also added that “I’m in my early 50s, and my main problem with film tends to be feeling bored. I sort of feel like I know where this is gonna go; I feel like I’ve seen this or that sequence of events play out an unbelievable number of times. I’m hoping to disrupt that a bit.”
Men is Alex Garland’s Next Film
Before making his directorial debut with 2014’sEx Machina, Garland wrote quite a few different movie scripts, such as the one for28 Days Later. AfterEx Machina,he then went to helm the 2018 sci-fi thrillerAnnihilationand 2020’sDevs, an FX miniseries.Menis Garland’s third feature film.
“In my mind, a film likeMenis connected to a film likeAnnihilation.They’re very much about how you’re feeling about something.Menis a gut-level film. I’m proud ofEx Machina, I really love it, but it’s an intellectual film.Menis not, I think…When I say it’s a slightly aggressive film, that’s what I mean: It’s coming at the viewer. It’s a gentle movie sometimes, there’s lots of silly humor in there, but it’s also a bit delinquent.”
When asked about his portrayal of toxic masculinity in his three feature films by EW, Garland said thatMenovertly address gender. That it comes up in many different ways, but withMen, he thought, “Screw it, I’m just gonna go straight into this.” That maybe it’s just that withMen, instead of running underneath, it sits there on the surface.
