Collider has the pleasure to present a new exclusive clip for Men, Alex Garland's upcoming low-budget horror film about mourning, misogyny, and Rory Kinnear being creepy in many different ways. Named “First Encounter,” the new clip reveals the moment when protagonist Harper (Jessie Buckley) meets a bizarre humanoid creature that’s trying to break into her house.
In Men, Harper retreats to the English countryside to deal with the death of her husband (Paapa Essiedu), who the previous trailer teased has committed suicide. However, it won’t be so easy for Harper to escape her past, as she’ll soon start to be haunted by visions, strange figures in the woods, and Kinnear’s face showing up in every male body she sees. Yep, a lot is going on in Men, and we’ve been dying to find out what the film is truly about. The new exclusive clip, though, might offer some new clues about Men’s plot.
In the clip, Harper is on the phone, talking to someone who sounds like part of an emergency line. The woman looks scared, and without hanging up, she quickly closes the front door of her home. The voice on the other side of the phone asks what’s happening, and Harper desperately tells them “he” is trying to get in. There’s when we see two hairy arms reaching through the mail lid in the door, trying to grab Harper. The clip is short but thrilling and teases that Harper might be fending off a supernatural creature in Garland’s horror film.
Garland became internationally famous after he partnered up with A24 to release his directorial debut, Ex-Machina, a sci-fi thriller that explores the limits of human conscience and the ability of Artificial Intelligence to mimic it. Garland's second film as director, Netflix's Annihilation, is another sci-fi flick that explores human nature and the limits of individual identity. Both Ex-Machina and Annihilation don’t hold anything back when pulling the rug out from under the audience and challenging our perception. Men is promising to be another mind-bending film, this time anchored in horror instead of science-fiction.
Men hits theaters on May 20. Check out the new clip below:
Here's the official synopsis for Men:
In the aftermath of a personal tragedy, Harper (Jessie Buckley) retreats alone to the beautiful English countryside, hoping to have found a place to heal. But someone or something from the surrounding woods appears to be stalking her. What begins as simmering dread becomes a fully-formed nightmare, inhabited by her darkest memories and fears in visionary filmmaker Alex Garland’s (Ex Machina, Annihilation) feverish, shape-shifting new horror film