Men
A24 | Release Date: May 20, 2022 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
65
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 55 Critic Reviews
Positive:
31
Mixed:
23
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
60
The Observer (UK)Mark KermodeJun 7, 2022
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. Read full review
60
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeJun 3, 2022
Alex Garland’s folk horror takes the broadest of swipes at various colours of toxic masculinity without opening up many new lines of investigation. Read full review
60
Rolling StoneK. Austin CollinsMay 24, 2022
As a movie about the subjective fears of a woman on her own, being hunted or haunted by male violence both commonplace and supernaturally eerie, the movie basically works: Your heart races, you’re skeeved out, you’re crawling out of your skin. As a movie about why those men are the way they are, which is an idea that occupies a substantial chunk of its runtime, well… Read full review
60
The New York TimesA.O. ScottMay 19, 2022
The movie, an uneasy amalgam of horror and allegory, full of creepy, gory effects and literary and mythological allusions, amounts to a sustained and specific indictment of the titular gender. Read full review
60
Screen RantMae AbdulbakiMay 9, 2022
The film is a combination of great ideas that could have gone a bit further. Read full review
60
EmpireSophie ButcherMay 9, 2022
Alex Garland once again shows an unmatched ability to conjure a beautifully uneasy atmosphere, the sense of which lingers on past the closing credits — but the substance underneath doesn’t quite connect. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 9, 2022
It is an unsubtle and schematic but very well-acted Brit folk-horror pastiche from the writer-director Alex Garland; it feels like a reverse-engineered version of The League of Gentlemen, with the overt comic intention concealed or denied. Read full review
60
TheWrapRobert AbeleMay 9, 2022
Garland’s active engagement with his themes, moods, and show-stopping ick is still something to be reckoned with in today’s climate of fear in the film industry regarding original stories. Read full review
58
UproxxVince ManciniMay 24, 2022
In Men, Garland has a lot of great little ideas, with brilliant performances and viscerally compelling imagery, but lacks one big idea to tie them all together. Read full review
58
The Film StageJordan RaupMay 9, 2022
The film is all the better for not over-explaining its gleefully outrageous final moments, but one wishes the journey getting there was handled with more consideration. Read full review
55
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzMay 18, 2022
With Men, the British filmmaker is stubbornly needling his audience with a never-ending barrage of pointy-ended questions that he has neither the inclination nor intention of vaguely addressing or even thinking through on his own terms. Men is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, all scrawled in crayon. Read full review
50
The New YorkerAnthony LaneMay 23, 2022
There will be viewers, no doubt, who share the violent bleakness of the movie’s outlook. Will they admire such rigor, or will they reckon, as I did, that it narrows and flattens the free movement of the drama, with dismal results? Read full review
50
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliMay 19, 2022
In a way, it’s almost worth recommending Men for the first 70 minutes. At that point, a quick exit would preserve the illusion that this is some sort of modern horror classic. For those who stick around, however, the final assessment isn’t likely to be nearly as favorable. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)Angelica Jade BastienMay 18, 2022
Despite all the broken bones, the graphic deaths, and the copious amounts of blood, the driving idea behind Men is not bold enough to feel frightening. Instead, it’s remarkably tepid. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeMark FeeneyMay 18, 2022
What a waste of a superb actress. Buckley almost makes Men worth sitting through. Almost. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineKeith WatsonMay 16, 2022
Men is ultimately about as deep as its title, a swipe at the multi-faceted terribleness of its titular subject that rarely gets beyond being a mere catalogue of the different ways that guys can be irritating around and dangerous toward women. Read full review
50
Little White LiesHannah StrongMay 9, 2022
Garland’s film seems to be an attempt to highlight the very real misogyny within the modern world that has no insight on the subject beyond Women Have Always Had It Quite Bad. Read full review
50
VarietyPeter DebrugeMay 9, 2022
The leaves are so green, the tone is so ominous, and the men are so … Rory Kinnear-y that audiences are all but guaranteed to leave this folk-horror bizart-house offering feeling disturbed, even if no two viewers can agree on what bothered them about it. Read full review
50
IGNSiddhant AdlakhaMay 9, 2022
Men, from Ex Machina and Annihilation director Alex Garland, is a folk-horror movie about gendered trauma that quickly falls apart. It skillfully builds tension in its first half — with the help of brilliant lead performances — only to have that tension dissipate when its inventive metaphors become consumed by traditional staging and literal explanations. Read full review
40
The IndependentClarisse LoughreyJun 2, 2022
Garland’s film, at times, feels a little like provocation for provocation’s sake. It suggests that all a male filmmaker needs to do to earn his feminist credentials is to show us men doing bad things. Think Bugs Bunny chomping on his carrot and, with a wink to the audience, declaring, “ain’t I a stinker?” Read full review
40
Time OutSophie Monks KaufmanMay 10, 2022
Garland has always flirted with obscurity, but in his best work this has been anchored by an enveloping depth of feeling. Now he has tumbled down a rabbit-hole here where no mortal man – not even a village of them, all played by Rory Kinnear – can follow. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerMay 10, 2022
With neither the grandiosity of pagan vision that illuminated The Green Knight, or the subversive forest horror of Ben Wheatley's In the Earth, Garland's Men is never quite a joke, but maybe that would have made it a more pointed parable. Read full review
40
Vanity FairRichard LawsonMay 9, 2022
The film may have just been a failed stab at inter-gender empathy, were it not for its wretched final act. This is where Men takes an abrupt turn into surreal horror, and when something bad starts glinting just beneath the surface of Garland’s apparent motivations. Read full review
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