All men really are the same in this body-horror fairytale from Alex Garland, the writer-director behind the adventurous sci-fi oddities Ex Machina and Annihilation. Lent emotional heft by Jessie Buckley (who singlehandedly saved the flawed 2020 screen adaptation of Iain Reid’s equally surreal I’m Thinking of Ending Things), it’s a playfully twisted affair – not quite as profound as it seems to think, perhaps, but boasting enough squishy metaphorical slime to ensure that its musings upon textbook male characteristics are rarely dull, and sometimes deliciously disgusting.
Buckley is Harper, the survivor of an abusive relationship whose partner, James (Paapa Essiedu), tried to gaslight her into taking responsibility for his own urban self-destructiveness (“you will have to live with it on your conscience”). Now she has escaped into verdant surroundings for a fortnight in “the dream country house” – with the emphasis on “dream”. From the oversaturated palette of Rob Hardy’s cinematography (fields so green they glow, flowers that pop in purple-blues) to the bloody, chocolate-box interiors conjured by production designer Mark Digby and set decorator Michelle Day, we’re in a world of big bad wolves (that axe by the fireside will come in handy) and poisoned apples. “Forbidden fruit” declares the rental house owner Geoffrey, a toothy, Tim Nice-But-Dim character whom Harper significantly describes as “a very specific type”.
