Like gravedigging, you have to dig deep if you want to get the payoff.

Alex Garland's film about the abuse of women succeeds thanks to its rich tapestry of jarring images. While fans of traditional horror may feel disappointed by its lack of jump scares, those who appreciate the more cerebral psychology of neo-horror (à la Hereditary) will find what they are looking for here.

The film is largely a success thanks to its strong cast and rampant symbolism, though Garland's choice to focus more on the women as victims rather than the titular men as aggressors means the movie misses its mark when it comes to demanding receipts.

My interpretation of the symbolism:

:rotating_light::construction::octagonal_sign::warning:MAJOR SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT:warning::octagonal_sign::construction::rotating_light:
The film, obviously, is on a mission to portray women (or at least one woman) as a victim to the male gender. That the director wants to paint all men with this broad stroke is evident in the choice to have the same actor (Rory Kinnear) play all of the aggressors, saying, in essence, that deep down all men are the same man: a being that's driven to hurt women.

Of course, her abusive husband, James, isn’t played by Rory Kinnear. Does this mean he’s somehow different than the other men who appear later in the film? Absolutely not, and proof of that is Jame’s injuries. After he falls / jumps from the building, we see that a gate post splits his right arm from his elbow to his hand, and that his left ankle is broken. Later on in the film, all of the men in the town who besiege Harper are shown to share these exact same injuries, illustrating that they are the same man as the abusive estranged husband.

This point is also reinforced by the presence of 'the naked man'. 'The naked man' is the personification of "The Green Man" (who is also symbolized in the stone carving on the church altar). According to Wikipedia, “The Green Man is a legendary being primarily interpreted as a symbol of rebirth, representing the cycle of new growth that occurs every spring,” which indicates that, as violence breeds violence, the cycle of violent men will continue with no end in sight. This is also what’s meant by the endless cycle of men birthing men that we witness in the film’s climax.

A quick glance at the film’s characters shows us several types of abusers that exist in society.

First, her husband, who starts off emotionally abusing his wife -- “If you leave me, I’ll kill myself” -- before graduating to physical abuse.

Then there’s Geoffrey, the man who rents her the mansion. He represents the “nice guy” who imposes his generosity on women and, when he’s later rebuffed, hurls insults at the women who aren’t interested in him.

The priest represents the patriarchy of religion and the structure put in place to perpetuate male domination and abuse.

Samuel is the young man 'frat bro' who feels he’s entitled to his ‘bit of fun’ and rebukes women who dare refuse him what he considers to be his due.

The police officer represents authority because, when he arrives at Harper’s rental property the night of the home invasion, he stands in her front yard yet neither says nor does anything. He’s as useless and impotent as the police and other authorities women might turn to when they seek assistance.

All of this is not to say that Jessie doesn’t have her allies. There is her best friend Riley (Gayle Rankin) who provides moral support throughout the film, and the kind policewoman who speaks with Harper when the police initially arrest the naked man. Garland’s point here is that the best place for a woman to get the support and assistance she needs is with other women.

This concept is driven home by the second figure etched into the altar (on the opposite face of The Green Man), that of the sheela na gig. The sheela na gig is a carving of a woman with an exaggerated vulva and is used to symbolize fertility and protection against evil.

That’s a brief rundown of the symbolism in Men, and also serves to illustrate what I appreciate about the film: it’s not because it’s horror that I have to turn off my brain. [/spoiler]

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"Men is undoubtedly one of the most unique, macabre, weird, expectedly divisive films of the year.

Rob Hardy's cinematography is truly impressive, navigating viewers through eye-popping visual details with the help of mesmerizing makeup and VFX. The score by Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow is also quite atmospheric and haunting.

Nevertheless, Alex Garland exhaustively repeats his obvious, heavy-handed message to the point of losing all emotional connection with the underdeveloped protagonist. The last act focuses too much on excessive, unpleasant gore to prove a point over and over again unnecessarily, functioning as a distracting, underwhelming conclusion.

Jessie Buckley - extraordinary - deserves much better, as does the versatile Rory Kinnear, who plays multiple roles."

Rating: C

Men, directed by Alex Garland, is a movie that fails to live up to its potential despite having some redeeming qualities.

The cinematography is fantastic and haunting, with creative shots that add to the overall experience. But this quality dips towards the end, with the director focusing more on horror elements in the tune of slasher/home invasion instead of psychological. The sound design is excellent, and the sinister feel really adds to the movie's overall mood. The acting is good, but nothing too spectacular. No performances really blew me away. However, the body horror in the movie is fantastic, and it had the hair on the back of my neck standing up. Even though I do think it is not entirely needed, I have to give props in that department.

Unfortunately, the script is pretty dreadful. The message is very in your face, overly complex and did not work for me. It was quite a turn off too, as it seemed as though the director was trying to say all men were the same and were terrible human beings. I know it had deeper meaning than that, but that surface level message is undeniable. I mean honestly, every person she encounters is such a massive piece of shit, not one person would have held out a helping hand?

Something that did really bother me was that the movie starts off as a creative psychological horror, but takes a spin in the third act that divulges into body horror mixed with slasher elements, which really takes away from the intriguing first 45 minutes of the film. Combine that with dreadful pacing, which will result in the audience feeling like they're waiting for the movie to be over.

Overall, Men is a forgettable movie that had potential, but unfortunately, failed to deliver in many aspects.

Score: 40%
Verdict: Poor

"Harper" (Jessie Buckley) heads off to rural Gloucestershire in England to take a break after the apparent suicide of her husband "James" (Paapa Essiedu). On arrival at the manor house she has rented for a fortnight, she is welcomed by the typical country squire type in "Geoffrey" (Rory Kinnear). She goes for a walk, during which she notices that she is being followed - and the man following her is naked. Spooked, she returns to her home to find that this is just the start of some seriously bizarre goings on in this tiny hamlet. What flaws this all from the start for me is that we see everyone in this community - the policeman, vicar, schoolboy, pub landlord as variations of the same man - Kinnear, yet the "Harper" character does not seem to clock this; she certainly doesn't acknowledge it, and that just doesn't work for me. If I were in a village where everyone looked the same, I'd have been out of there in a shot. Anyway, she lingers on for a while as things become more perilous and she is clearly the focus of the malevolent intentions of this creature - and it all builds to quite a clever feat of special effects and not a great deal else. There is a largely undeveloped underlying plot line about her on-the-rocks marriage that may have had some bearing on the conclusion, but to be honest I was rather bored by the repetition of it all by then. The exterior photography is nice enough and Buckley is competent, but Kinnear's roles are all about the skills of the make up artists. The dialogue is nothing special leaving the score to work hard to try to create a sense of peril that, in the end, I felt was just ... lacking. It's no worse than many of the recent Blumhouse efforts, but that doesn't make it very good, either.

People will hate _Men_ if they go into it wanting a straightforward story or a film that has one, clear cut meaning once those end credits crawl across the screen. _Men_ doesn’t offer either of those things. The film features stunning cinematography, a mesmerizing forest sequence, and a thrilling score that is as unsettling as it is operatic. Rory Kinnear is exquisitely chilling. This is the type of horror film that is purely, disgustingly, and gloriously nasty and ambiguous. _Men_ is simultaneously a film you shouldn’t think too much about and yet absolutely think about all the time once it’s over.

**Full review:** https://hubpages.com/entertainment/Men-2022-Review-A-Bizarre-Graphic-and-Unforgettable-Folk-Horror-Film