Scrutable Monstrousness in Alex Garland’s Men (2022)

Abstract

Scrutable Monstrousness in Alex Garland’s Men (2022) Claire M. Class (bio) If the monstrous inscrutability of women has long animated the horror genre in films such as Alien and The Brood (both 1979), then the genre-expanding horror film Men (2022) ultimately recognizes a far more scrutable monstrousness in men.1 Men proceeds from an interesting conceit, albeit one immediately apparent from the trailer. Protagonist Harper (Jessie Buckley) seeks solace in the British countryside after her husband, James (Paapa Essiedu), falls to his death in what was either an accident or a suicide. As soon as Harper arrives at a country house, a series of increasingly menacing neighborhood men confront her, all of whom the audience recognizes as played by the same actor (Rory Kinnear). In the final twenty minutes, the film morphs, changing in a way that, though it would be hard to describe as a “twist,” disturbs the already muddy ground the film traverses. By my reading, which begins with Men’s much-discussed finale, this ungroundedness is the point: the film is about the interpretive work that women perform. As the Kinnear characters descend on the country house in the last part of the film, one of them thrusts his arm through the door’s mailbox slot. Harper stabs a knife through his forearm, and he removes his arm without extracting the perpendicular knife, splitting his arm and hand fully in two. The subsequent car crash of a different Kinnear character results in a mangled leg, and the injuries suffered by Harper’s antagonists begin to mirror those James sustained in his deadly fall, as he was impaled on a fence: his leg mangled, his arm bisected by an iron rod. At the same time, it is clear that the Kinnear characters are merging into one being. This naked, bloody, maimed figure enters the house. A vaginal chasm opens on its body, and it proceeds to give birth to another adult version of itself, covered in blood and secretions. This happens two more times, until, the fourth time, the composite of Kinnear characters gives birth to a naked James. [End Page 85] Defying our spoiler-averse moviegoing culture, reviewers have felt compelled to directly address the last twenty minutes of Men. In an interview, Alex Garland sheds some light on the film, linking its imagery to Green Man and sheela na gig carvings common in the British Isles (Rottenberg). Katie Rife deems the end of Men too interpretively open to be satisfying. She thinks it fails its feminist promise to unpack patriarchal male behavior, providing viewers with little resolution. Reviewer Harper Lambert sees the morphing, birthing figure as a symbol of unsuccessful male birth. The figure births itself time and time again, but each time is equally unfruitful, producing a gruesome and ill-formed body. In the end, it delivers an adult James, who is still infantile and desperate for love. In Lambert’s telling, the ending indicates that Harper is emotionally distant: she is unavailable to viewers just as she was unavailable to her distraught husband, who had threatened suicide and hit Harper upon hearing of her intention to divorce him. Alternatively, instead of considering Harper distant, Yohana Desta thinks the film’s ending affirms Harper’s resilience. Harper has confronted the worst and neutralized it. Her grief and guilt over her husband’s death are no longer poised to control her. Despite the interpretive possibilities that the ending of Men permits, from beginning to end, the film specifically foregrounds the interpretive gymnastics that women perform day in and day out.2 From the onset, Harper must continually second-guess her instincts and worry about the actions of the men around her. Does this man mean what he is saying or doing? More importantly, will he hurt her? In the final twenty minutes, this interpretive difficulty takes physical shape: the inexplicable and continually changing gruesome form confronts Harper directly. And yet, I argue, the difficulty is finally resolved. Harper eventually sees her deceased husband for what he was: someone who didn’t know his own mind, who had no inner resources, and who turned outward for affirmation, a gaping wound that could never be healed...