‘Men’ Review: Alex Garland’s Gender-Upender Fails to Earn Its Body-Horror Finale

variety.com:

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticSPOILER ALERT: The following review contains spoilers.In “Ex Machina” director Alex Garland’s latest, “Men,” the leaves are so green, the tone is so ominous, and the men are so … Rory Kinnear-y that audiences are all but guaranteed to leave this folk-horror bizart-house offering feeling disturbed, even if no two viewers can agree on what bothered them about it.

There’s that shocker of an ending, of course, but we’ll postpone discussion of that till the penultimate paragraph of this review, so as not to spoil the fun — even if, by the time you see it, “Men” is already likely to be defined by its over-the-top finale.Kinnear, who comes across as a chummy enough fellow — albeit one who might chase you into a back alley and murder you if given the chance — impressively embodies eight different characters: basically, all the men, plus one particularly creepy boy, in a rural English village.

This thoroughly odd man-among-men (the most intimidating of whom lumbers through the woods, naked as Adam) serves as the movie’s “monster,” but not in any conventional sense.

Whatever threat Kinnear’s manifold characters represent takes shape largely in our heads, put there by whatever life experience we’ve had with the various types he plays.