There are moments in “Men” on the way to purpose your breath to quicken and your coronary heart to pound. Still, others will go away you scratching your head and stifling laughter. 
 Whatever your response is to the modern meticulously made thoughts warp from writer/director Alex Garland, it won`t be indifference. This is a visceral experience, and it reinforces Garland`s singular prowess as a craftsman of indelible visuals and gripping mood. As in his preceding films, “Ex Machina” and “Annihilation,” he establishes a sense of dread early and holds you in it, unyielding, for lots of the movie`s duration. The methodical pacing, eerie cinematography, startling sound design, and shiny visible consequences all paintings in synergy to create a nearly cruel tension. But then we attain his wild, muscular climax—and that`s in which matters, in the long run, fall apart. 
 Men” is at its mightiest as a haunting exploration of grief, because it trudges an onerous avenue closer to healing. The English nation-state in which our heroine seeks safe haven after a frightening loss seems nonviolent and inviting. The lush woods are quiet and cool, as they so frequently are in Garland`s films—till they aren`t. The stately manor she`s rented gives a ways greater area than she needs—till she has nowhere to hide. Jessie Buckley navigates the numerous perils that look forward to her person, Harper, with an unease that ultimately rises to terror. Her emotions are all there at the surface, and she`s dragging us alongside her as she fights for her sanity in addition to her safety. There`s an honesty and immediacy to her performance—to her display screen presence in general—that maintain us striking on even as “Men” turns into more and more unfocused. 
 Harper has escaped to this idyllic village after experiencing a profound tragedy, which we witness in enchanting gradual movement beneath neath orangey, stormy skies at the movie`s start. But even though she`s pushed 4 hours outdoor for her domestic in London, it doesn`t take long for her to find out that she`s located herself in the middle of a unique type of trauma. There`s something incorrect with this place, with those human beings, who all occur to be ... men. One unique man, to be greater precise, in a whole lot of forms. He`s the caretaker, the vicar, the bartender, the policeman, and—in his maximum annoying forms—the bare stalker and the surly teenager. (The facial CGI on that child appears to be deliberately imperfect to make him even greater off-setting than the rest.) He is Rory Kinnear, a longtime personal actor displaying his awesome versatility in a big selection of roles. Hair and make-up consequences permit him to expect every new person distinctly, however, he continually continues an unmistakably menacing air. Because irrespective of who this man is, he could her down—or worse—time and again again. Whether it`s a dismissal or a sexist insult, a passive-competitive observation or a straight-up competitive attack, he simply maintains coming, every incarnation greater risky than the last. How Harper offers with the onslaught turns into her very own non-public hell—and ours. 
 There`s a line we move in “Men” in which it turns into clean we`ve left fact entirely. At the same time, it`s feasible that Harper`s simply paranoid, as in a single quietly effective scene wherein she sends her voice echoing playfully down an empty tunnel, most effective to find out that possibly it`s now no longer empty after all. But in time, we`re in a complete-on hallucination zone, and dazzlingly so. “Men” buzzes and builds to a frenzy in methods which can be paying homage to Darren Aronofsky`s “mother!”, which divided audiences the manner Garland`s movie in reality will. Working together along with his ordinary cinematographer, Rob Hardy, and composers, Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury, in addition to editor Jake Roberts, Garland creates a symphony of managed chaos. 
 And yet, at the same time as the movie`s technical excellence is without question, the issues Garland is exploring are a piece hazier. What is he attempting to mention approximately the pains girls ought to resist in the patriarchy? He introduces biblical imagery early and frequently: Harper actually plucks an apple from a tree withinside the lawn and takes a chew upon arrival on the manor. Is he suggesting that nothing has been modified in 2,000-plus years of male-woman relations? Later still, he inserts a few ritualistic pagan imageries to hammer domestic that we're certainly looking old-school, `70s British peoples horror, if not anything else. And how does all this relate to the movie`s shocking, graphic, and downright weird conclusion, which maintains going and going to the volume that it conjures up unintended laughter? Bringing those thoughts into sharper awareness could have given them a ways greater power. Instead, they meander and sprawl, last exciting however tantalizingly out of attaining. 
 Still, that is the stuff of nightmares, and Garland suggests matters right here that you`ll by no means be capable of unseeing—however you'll experience discussing them in a while with a pal over espresso or a drink. The lobbies of arthouse theaters international are positive to be complete of human beings wandering from their auditoriums in a daze, questioning what they simply witnessed and wishing desperately to make feel of it. So maybe “Men” are properly for something after all: They may simply shop cinema.