Remember when horror films were fun? When Harper (Jessie Buckley) tells her husband James (Paapa Essiedu) that she is leaving him, he uses emotional blackmail to try and make her stay; when that doesn't work, he resorts to violence. And then he falls to his death (either accidentally or intentionally-it is never made clear).
Harper feels like she needs to get away from it all, so she rents a country house for a couple of weeks. The owner of the property, Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear) is an 'old-school' country gent, who treats Harper like the weaker sex; the local vicar (also Kinnear) tells Harper that her husband's death was her fault; and a young lad (with Kinnear's face digitally plastered on his head) calls her names. Meanwhile, Harper is being stalked by a naked man (Kinnear) with leaves sticking out of his face. After the stalker is arrested, an unsympathetic policeman (Kinnear again) tells Harper that the man has been released without charge.
With nearly all of the males in this film played by the same actor, the underlying message seems to be that all men are the same, guilty of toxic masculinity/misogyny in one form or another. Could Harper be losing her mind under the stress of being treated so poorly by men? Or are these horrors very real? I don't mind the ambiguity, but then there's all of the pretentious symbolism and analogy one expects from A24 and director Alex Garland, and it's not easy to decipher, making the film a total head-scratcher for much of the time.
What is the deeper meaning of the green man, Harper lying about playing the piano, the dandelion seeds, the echoes, the carvings in the church, the dead bird, the apples, the disappearing policeman, and Harper's pregnant sister? I can hazard a guess at some of these, but in the end - without much investigation post-viewing - this 'elevated' horror proves to be precisely what I hate about most of A24's output: a puzzling oddity that hasn't been made to be enjoyed, but rather to appeal to cinematic snobs - pretentious chin-strokers for whom the worth of a movie is directly proportional to how much it baffles, bores, and requires research to fully comprehend.
To their credit, Kinnear really goes for it in every role, his many characters like something straight out of Royston Vasey (Geoffrey is great), and Buckley doesn't allow the perplexing nature of the script to dampen her performance. And if what you're after is a big dose of weirdness with some amazingly graphic body horror, then this one will definitely do the trick, the final act delivering plenty of impressive gross-out special effects. I, however, prefer my movies to make a modicum of sense; failing that, they should entertain. If they deliver a message as well, great, but the last thing I want to think when the end credits roll is 'Why?'.