By Erik Hawkins Published Jul 11, 2026, 12:09 AM EDT Erik Hawkins is an award-winning writer and editor who's been obsessed with cinema since he was old enough to hold Roger Ebert's Video Home Companion in his hands. He lives in NYC, where he rabidly watches everything from the newest releases to the more odd and obscure, and regularly shares his thoughts on Letterboxd. From ghost-writing fiction and webisodes in South America to local news, trial coverage, and politics in NYC, he's rarely put down his laptop over the past 15 years. Sign in to your Collider account Add Us On follow Follow followed Followed Like Like Thread Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recap Writer-director Alex Garland 's stratospheric rise has been remarkable to watch over the past decade-plus. After beginning his career as a screenwriter who frequently collaborated with Danny Boyle , Garland began to carve out a place for himself as a middle-to-high-brow shepherd of science fiction and action pictures that fit comfortably within the A24 wheelhouse and make decent money at the box office. This sensibility, which began with his 2014 directorial debut Ex Machina , has carried him through years of critically lauded work, and landed him the task of adapting Hidetaka Miyazaki and George R. R. Martin 's gargantuan, surreal video game epic Elden Ring .
In 2022, though, Garland released his most divisive and shamelessly disreputable film — one that broke away from his signature style into something much gorier and funnier. Men is a horror picture that, on paper, shares much of its DNA with other A24 elevated horror films , with its luscious, vaguely haunted landscape shots, heavy-handed symbolism, and a menacing ambient score.
However, what distinguishes it from the rest of the grief-as-horror pack is its dedication to increasingly absurd and gruesome effects shots that owe a debt to the 1980s glory days of Brian Yuzna and Stuart Gordon . Men's questionable aspirations toward deeper meaning aside, the film goes deeper and deeper into gory, ridiculous effects as it goes on. Its climax plays like something Yuzna could have dreamed up to include in the notorious finale of Society — and while many critics viewed it as a big swing-and-a-miss by a talented director, for the right kind of viewer, it's a hell of a lot of fun to watch .
Jessie Buckley as Harper in Men (2022) Image via A24 For much of its runtime, Men could be mistaken for a parody of A24's house horror style. It's heavily, almost comically metaphorical as it follows the tribulations of Harper ( Jessie Buckley ), a young woman who flees London for the countryside after her abusive husband jumps to his death from their high rise. But rather than finding peace in her rural surroundings, she repeatedly encounters a sinister naked man who gradually becomes more and more plant-like in appearance, as well as an overbearing landlord, a disturbing youth who wants to play hide and seek, and a lecherous vicar — all played masterfully by Buckley's sole co-star, Rory Kinnear . She also eats an apple from a tree without the landowner's permission.
Harper is seeking escape, while also at least partially blaming herself for her husband's suicide. But in her quest for inner peace, she instead finds only more predatory men. Even the vicar, who starts out understanding, eventually reverts to sexual violence in the fin…