{"id":123961,"date":"2022-05-10T07:05:34","date_gmt":"2022-05-10T06:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=123961"},"modified":"2022-05-12T06:18:08","modified_gmt":"2022-05-12T05:18:08","slug":"men-review-multiple-man-iacs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/cinema\/men-review-multiple-man-iacs\/","title":{"rendered":"Men Review: Multiple Man-iacs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/interviews\/ex-machinas-alex-garland-talks-avoiding-blade-runner-and-bjork\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Alex Garland\u2019s<\/a> <strong><em>Men<\/em><\/strong> shares DNA with David Bruckner\u2019s recent Rebecca Hall-led <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/cinema\/the-night-house-review-worth-a-visit\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong><em>The Night House<\/em><\/strong><\/a>. Both see widowed women navigating an isolated haunted house, each also concerned with the fallout of a husband\u2019s suicide, that trauma weaved into the thematic underpinning.<\/p>\n<p>But while Hall\u2019s character is plagued in her own home, <strong><em>Men<\/em>\u2019s<\/strong> Harper (Jessie Buckley) is on a solo vacation in the English countryside. Another crucial difference: <strong><em>The Night House<\/em>\u2019s<\/strong> instigating suicide is presented as sudden, but in <strong><em>Men<\/em><\/strong>, Harper both witnesses husband James\u2019 (Paapa Essiedu) apparent jump from their building and is explicitly told he\u2019ll take his own life if they divorce, in an explosive flashback confrontation involving assault \u2013 where cinematographer Rob Hardy lights their apartment in appropriately fiery hues.<\/p>\n<p>Harper\u2019s plagued by horrors in her mind and is soon enough physically plagued. After meeting the holiday home\u2019s eccentric though relatively benign owner, Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear), nearby woods exploration triggers stalking by a nude man (also Kinnear), who tries entering the house. From then, every onscreen man \u2013 from a policeman to a spiteful teenager \u2013 has Kinnear\u2019s face.<\/p>\n<p>This isn\u2019t a doppelg\u00e4nger tale per se, as Harper never clearly acknowledges that every local male presence has the same visage. Kinnear\u2019s (roughly) ten characters each personify different aspects of male aggression, from potentially unconscious belittling language to perceived entitlement to both a woman\u2019s time and body. Most are explicit physical threats in the second hour\u2019s home invasion, as Buckley fights these figures, one of which is apparently a manifestation of the Green Man myth.<\/p>\n<p>Garland\u2019s trademark opacity as writer-director is at its peak in <strong><em>Men<\/em><\/strong>, but the back half certainly delivers on visceral body horror \u2013 one sequence simultaneously evokes both Takashi Miike\u2019s <strong><em>Gozu<\/em><\/strong> and Neil Jordan\u2019s <strong><em>The Company of Wolves<\/em><\/strong>. That said, for whatever practical effects may have been used, an evident CG-aided sheen drains some of the images\u2019 tactility and impact.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Men will be released in cinemas on 1 June.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rory Kinnear&#8217;s various characters personify different aspects of male aggression against widow Jessie Buckley in Alex Garland&#8217;s visceral body horror, Men.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":123962,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"MSN_Categories":"Entertainment","MSN_Publish_Option":true,"MSN_Is_Local_News":false,"MSN_Is_AIAC_Included":"Empty","MSN_Location":"[]","MSN_Add_Feature_Img_On_Top_Of_Post":false,"MSN_Has_Custom_Author":false,"MSN_Custom_Author":"","MSN_Has_Custom_Canonical_Url":false,"MSN_Custom_Canonical_Url":""},"categories":[2615,8],"tags":[7348],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Men-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123961"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123961"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":123965,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123961\/revisions\/123965"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}