Starring Jessie Buckley and Rory Kinnear and Rory Kinnear and Rory Kinnear etc.

Written & Directed by Alex Garland

A24, out now

Following the premature death of her husband Harper Marlowe rents a luxury cottage in a remote village where disturbing and violent events ensue.

I’m a big fan of Worzel Gummidge. You know, the charming BBC children’s series about a scarecrow that comes to life? I particularly loved last year’s Guy Fawkes episode when Toby Jones played six members of the village Bonfire Night Committee. Jones is a peerless actor, and how we laughed each time he turned up in a new wig, with different padding, funny teeth and a silly voice. With its adult subtext hinting at rural inbreeding, not only was it skillful, but constantly amusing. Ha, ha, and indeed ha.

Herein lies the problem with Alex Garland’s new folk horror Men. When Jessie Buckley’s Harper rents a country cottage to escape the trauma of her husband’s horrific death, it’s not so much AirBnB, as KinnearBnB. For reasons known only to Garland (and perhaps Covid?) every male character in the village is played by the highly talented Rory Kinnear. They are all terribly sinister and threatening, or they’re supposed to be. I hesitate to say that Kinnear is as peerless as Jones (because it wouldn’t make sense), but as with Worzel Gummidge with the help of wigs, padding, funny teeth, a variety of voices, plus a soupçon of digital de-aging, how we laughed.

I’m sorry, but we did. The whole cinema. The same joy at seeing him appear as a different village eccentric; the same snigger-worthy subtext about rural inbreeding. There’s a reason that Little Britain, Harry and Paul, The League of Gentlemen, Dick Emery, Alec Guinness in Kind Hearts and Coronets, and (debatably) Eddie Murphy’s Nutty Professor movies all involve the same actor/actors dressing up as multiple characters. It’s because it’s inherently funny.

You can’t help wondering why Jessie Buckley doesn’t notice that everyone in the pub looks the same? Or, if we’re supposed to believe that they are somehow projections of her inner psyche, then why on earth do they all have to look like Rory Kinnear?

When the movie develops into a home invasion horror in its final act, there are echoes of the benchmark for hyper-violent west country home invasion, Sam Peckinpah’s controversial Straw Dogs. Whatever you think of that movie in a 21st century context, it is undoubtedly a bloody and challenging watch. Unfortunately, when every invader is a different iteration of the talented Rory, it becomes Straw Kinnears, which provoked a fellow cinemagoer to quip, ‘Eh up, who is he this time?’.

When the film reached its extremely surreal climax, involving all sorts of terribly clever prosthetics and CGI, the concept had become so ridiculous, while simultaneously taking itself so seriously, that the laughter in the cinema became continuous.

What any of this had to do with Jessie Buckley’s dead husband, and the rather serious backstory, I have absolutely no idea.

On the plus side, the leads (all two of them) act like their lives depend on it, which is commendable in the circumstances. The film also looks amazing although why the apple tree is in fruit at the same time as the woods are carpeted with bluebells is a mystery that perhaps we shouldn’t get into.

Verdict: Men wants to be a profound exploration of oppressive male control through the genres of folk horror and home invasion. Sadly, its central conceit damns it to being a bizarrely comedic Carry On, Up the Village of the Kinnears. Despite all of that, perhaps I’m being unfair. Perhaps, it’s a worthy, bold failure. File under ‘oddly watchable’. 5/10

Martin Jameson