Men

I've been an Alex Garland fan since he penned the screenplay for "28 Days Later." His first writing/directing debut was "Ex Machina" and he followed it up with "Annihilation" (think of an all female version of John Carpenter's "The Thing" but in the tropics Vs. the Antarctic). The men (or a good chunk of them) of "28 Days Later" and "Ex Machina" are portrayed as sex crazed evil doers. In Garland's latest film, "Men," he has done nothing to elevate the stature of the male gender in any way. In fact, the men in "Men" seem to be violent, emotionally needy, and likely sex crazed. I hypothesize Garland's view to be: men equate sex with love and if the sex is lost, so too are the men. What's it all about? Jessie Buckley plays Harper, a woman who has gone on holiday in the English countryside after the suicide of her husband James. She is haunted by the memory of James and physically haunted by some strange man in the woods - although all the men around her cottage-house are creepy as fuck. The film has a superb sense of unease, dreed, and horror. It becomes surreal in the end and this horror/meditation about the weight women bare is brought out in some of the most disturbing, deranged, and dreadful imagery I have every seen. The images have haunted me. It's extremely well done. Catch this horror show at your local rep cinema or on streaming services.