Editor's note: The below piece contains spoilers for Men.If you have been lucky enough to be living under a rock for the past several months, you’ll have been unaware that one of the most absolutely horrifying aspects of 2022 is Men. Sinister, controlling, and unnerving, it is a haunting aspect of daily life that threatens to consume everything. There is also the new A24 film Men from writer-director Alex Garland, known for Ex Machina and Annihilation, that is similarly being unleashed upon the world. Men tells the story of Jessie Buckley’s Harper, who decides to take a solo vacation to the peace and quiet of the English countryside. Upon arriving, she is given a tour by Rory Kinnear’s bumbling yet sinister Geoffrey. A landlord who just won't ever seem to leave, he is frustratingly clingy and makes many odd comments that prove to be just the tip of the iceberg of the film’s horror.

Eventually, Harper is able to get through the tour and hopes to then spend some time relaxing. She has recently experienced a traumatic event and is seeking to clear her head from it all. Instead, she soon stumbles upon a nightmare that ends up too close for comfort. If you have come looking for answers to what on Earth that whole ending was about, you’re in the right place. However, in the event you have not yet seen Men, best bookmark this page to come back later for an analysis of its conclusion. Seriously, this is your final warning as I am going to spoil everything that occurs at the end of the film. Got it? Okay, strap in because here we go.

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RELATED: ‘Men’ Review: Alex Garland’s Take on the Horror of Misogyny Is a Wild Experiment That Almost Works

To begin, let's establish the literal sequence of events. The reason Harper is here is that her abusive ex-husband James (Paapa Essiedu) died after she tried to divorce him. Told through a series of flashbacks, we see how he threatened to kill himself in response. When things turn violent, Harper kicks him out of the flat. Harper later looks out her window and sees him falling to his death. Whether he jumped or simply fell trying to get back down from a higher floor is left unclear. When she discovers his mangled body down below, the film specifically focuses on his wounds that will end up being important later in the film. For now, just know that he is very certainly dead. We now see why the traumatized Harper is seeking out the sleepy town. She wants to get away from the horrors she witnessed and remains, understandably, quite shaken. Unfortunately, there is no escaping this past despite her best efforts.

This first becomes present when, on a walk through the woods, she sees a screeching figure that begins following her. She manages to run back home, though we soon see that this man has followed her all the way back. Now roaming naked around where Harper doesn’t initially see him, we get our closest look at him and discover that he is actually also played by Kinnear. He will be the first of many. When Harper catches sight of him, she calls the police and one of the officers that shows up is also, if you can believe it, played by Kinnear. A creepy child, a callous priest, a bartender, and many more all bear his resemblance with small tweaks. Harper doesn’t directly acknowledge this, though does seem taken aback by it all. We’ll get into what this means beyond its diegetic explanation here shortly, but, for now, just know that this doesn’t just exist for the purposes of being creepy as it masks something far more terrifying.

Things reach a breaking point when the man who was stalking her is released from prison. Harper tries to talk through what is happening with her sister Riley (Gayle Rankin) over a series of video calls that are plagued with glitches that seem to show something terrible happening. She also soon discovers that the men are beginning to terrorize her from outside the home. Even as Riley has pledged to come there to help, Harper is still left alone for the time being. Windows get smashed as the film follows the chaos in and around the house. In the midst of this, Harper manages to stab the arm of one of the men when he stuck it through the mail slot on the door. He then pulls said arm back, cleaving it in half when the blade gets stuck. After nearly being run down by a car while on foot, Harper attempts to regroup back at the house again. It is then that the tension morphs into something far more strange as Garland puts on a display that plays out as a bizarre nightmare of body horror.

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Image via A24

In the climactic scene, the various versions of Kinnear all begin giving birth to each other. With all the power of the written word at my disposal, nothing can fully encapsulate the experience of actually seeing this. Harper is just able to look on with stunned silence at what is unfolding. As she goes back into the house, the various men giving birth to each other continue to follow her until they are all the way inside. Then, seeming to emerge feet first, is James. Harper, no longer afraid, just sits on the couch next to him. The two talk briefly and James, manipulative as ever, says that all he wanted was her love. The film then cuts to the next day with Harper alone outside as her sister arrives, revealed to be pregnant, and takes in the carnage of the prior night’s chaos. No words are exchanged, and the film ends on a rather somber note that is mixed with quiet tranquility, a respite from the horror we just saw laid bare before us.

Now for what this all actually means. Something that should be clear off the bat is that this did all actually happen. Even as James is gone and nowhere to be found, Harper did not imagine all that transpired. It isn’t a dream, a vision, a hallucination, or any such nonsense. This is seen in how her sister does get to see the aftermath of what happened for herself. Further, in an interview with Indiewire’s Ryan Lattanzio, Garland said such a cop-out would have been “borderline unethical” and “there was never any intention to do that.” Of course, for all you nerds that believe in the death of the author, there can be interpretations that run counter to what was intended. However, evidence is all pointing in the direction of this being something that was real. Beyond anything else, the meaning of the experience would be vastly undercut if it were to just reduce everything to be a bait and switch. The impact comes from the tangible sense that something is wrong and that nothing can be done to escape it. This is a film whose ending clearly is wanting to say something to us beyond a twist ending.

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Image via A24

In an interview with Vox’s Alissa Wilkinson, Garland said he views his films as a way for him to grapple with deeper themes and ideas “without sounding silly.” Elaborating, he said that he tries to “make the cases and the arguments within the films.” Men is the most explicit example of this in all his films to date as the ending sequence makes clear that he is arguing that the horrors of misogyny are born into each subsequent man to the point where they are indistinguishable from each other. That it all ends up coming back to James hammers this home further, revealing that Harper will never be able to escape his toxicity as it will only take the form of yet another man and continue to terrorize her. The similarity of the wound on the hand of her husband’s mangled boy being mimicked by the other men serves as a blunt connection. It is all part of how such terror is found everywhere with Garland showing how it is firmly embedded in institutions like the church and the police. When Harper turns to them for help, they either don’t care or are actively hostile to her well-being. There is truly no escaping it. Even on what was supposed to be a vacation where she was left alone, Harper couldn’t run away from the all-encompassing reality of living in a male-dominated society.

As for the whole sequence of events at the end, again, looking to the director’s words can prove helpful. In an interview with The Atlantic’s David Sims, Garland outlined how “by the end of the film, what is notionally the monster is at its most disempowered and its most pathetic and its most hopeless.” This is something that actively undercuts the genre and our expectations for it, a gamble it does in service of its prevailing argument. It shows how there is still something unsettling and frightening about men that is simultaneously rather pitiful. Masculinity posits strength and domination through fear though, when stripped of all its pretensions, is a fragile construct. It very much is dangerous to others in order to justify its own strength, though it also can crumble when put up under the slightest bit of scrutiny. Where the monster of the movie came from or how it came to be in a literal sense is less important than what it represents. This is what some rather reductive interpretations of Garland’s works have often missed and what should be remembered in unpacking this newest one. Whether you like the manner in which it is conveyed or not, the meaning of it goes beyond the literal into the metaphorical terrors of masculinity that remain all too real.