Enys Men is a real curio – a folk horror film with all the desperate mystery of a message in a bottle, or a garbled SOS call. It’s a film that demands some deciphering, viewers dropped in like detectives. A daunting task, maybe, but Enys Men is so rich with symbolism that there’s a real satisfaction to be gained from rifling through the clues. I wished only that I could get my own hands on it – to cut it up and rearrange it until something new blossomed in front of me.
It follows a woman, named only The Volunteer (Mary Woodvine), who is stationed on a remote outcrop (the film’s title is Cornish for “stone island”). Her sole task is to monitor the growth and condition of a patch of flowers. Time seems to bend around her. A radio broadcast mentions a monument erected half a century ago in May 1973, but The Volunteer’s notes are all dated to April of that year. She finds a piece of wreckage from a boat that’s yet to sink, and places it on her mantle. Her home crumbles into decay yet, in between scenes, seems to rebuild itself.
