Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
Lately, when I walk into a movie theater, I am desperate to feel.
In this total darkness, surrounded by strangers, is the potential for poetry and challenge.
Nestled into its scenes of body mangling and its formal experimentation is a story about depression and loss.
The unease settles in quickly.
Forbidden fruit a brief interaction that sets up the religious currents that will rush forth from the film.
Touring the facilities bathroom, Geoffrey commands, Ladies, do watch what you flush.
Harpers refuge soon devolves into repeated violences, all perpetrated by men, all played by Kinnear.
An adolescent boy demands she play hide-and-seek, then calls her a stupid bitch when she rebuffs him.
The scenes set in the present are vibrant, verdant to the point of garish.
Scenes set in the past take a different approach.
In his small role, Essiedu is asked to play a single note of desperate emotional manipulation.
James warned Harper he would kill himself if she divorced him, as she wished to do.
Once his violence turned physical, Harper only grew more resolute.
Now shes haunted by his death and the broken body he left behind.
Or did he mean to kill himself?
His body is a site of horror.
His soul and interiority are nowhere to be found.
We dont learn much about Harper either: She works in finance (maybe?
But Buckley nails the tricksy confrontations that send Harpers fears and fight for survival into overdrive.
Its a crisp rendition of a psychological haunting.
His patronizing overtones nag throughout his early scenes as Geoffrey.
The potential for great sexual violence hangs in the air.
A knife is held.
you might almost feel his breath on her face, her pulse quickening.
The tension and weirdness of Harpers situation progresses to a bombastically fleshy finale.
Instead, its remarkably tepid.
Garland renders misogyny airless, reduced to a primal issue rather than one that is man-made.
The message behindMenamounts to Damn, misogyny is crazy, right?
In the towns church is a stone basin of sorts.
Mens ending is marked by violence and gore to extreme degrees, involving the destruction of flesh and expectations.
This should have been chilling, piercing even.
Instead, as it drew out, I felt unmoved and distant.
A horror film doesnt need a grand message, political or otherwise.
ButMenis desperate to find one in all its contortions.
What were left with is blood and gristle and sinew without the skeleton to hold it up.
Thank you for subscribing and supporting our journalism.
