‘Men’ Ending Explained — Alex Garland’s Film Births a Shocking Conclusion

The big picture

• In the film A24 by Alex Garland
  men
  Jessie Buckley's Harper faces a nightmare of strange men haunting her past and digging up painful memories.
• men
  it symbolizes the cycle of misogyny and toxicity, proving that it is impossible to escape.
• The end of
  men
  it strips the monster of its fragile masculinity, revealing its pitiable nature.

Sinister, controlling and disturbing, the film A24 men from the writer-director Alex Garlandknown for Ex Machina i annihilationand this year's Civil wartells the story of Jessie BuckleyHarper, who decides to take a solo vacation in the peace and quiet of the English countryside. Upon arrival, he pays her a visit Rory KinnearGeoffrey, crazy but sinister. A landlord who never seems to leave, he's frustratingly clingy and makes a lot of weird comments that turn out to be just the tip of the iceberg of the film's horror.

Finally, Harper can get over the tour and hopes to spend some time relaxing. She has recently experienced a traumatic event and is trying to get her head around it. Instead, he soon encounters a nightmare that ends up too close for comfort. If you've come looking for answers as to what this finale was all about, you've come to the right place. However, in case you haven't seen it yet men, better bookmark this page to come back later to analyze your conclusion. Seriously, this is your last warning I'm going to spoil everything that happens at the end of the movie. I have it? Okay, buckle up because here we are.

Harper is chased by men who all look the same

To begin, let's establish the literal sequence of events. The reason Harper is here is because her abusive ex-husband James (Paapa Essiedu) died after she tried to divorce him. Told through a series of flashbacks, we see how he threatened to kill himself in response. When things turn violent, Harper kicks him out of the apartment. Harper later looks out his window and sees him fall to his death. It is not clear whether he jumped or simply fell trying to get down from a higher floor. When she discovers his mutilated body underneath, the film focuses specifically on his injuries that will end up being important later in the film. For now, just know that he's dead for sure. Now we see why the traumatized Harper seeks out the sleepy town. She wants to get away from the horrors she witnessed and is understandably still quite shaken. Unfortunately, you can't escape this past despite your best efforts.

This becomes apparent for the first time when, on a walk in the woods, she sees a screeching figure that begins to follow her. She manages to run home, though we soon see that this man has followed her all the way back. Now wandering around naked where Harper doesn't initially see him, we get a closer look and find out that he's actually played by Kinnear as well. It will be the first of many. When Harper sees him, he calls the police and one of the officers who shows up is also, if you can believe it, played by Kinnear. A creepy boy, a callous priest, a waiter and many more have his likeness with small tweaks. Harper doesn't directly acknowledge this, though he seems surprised by the whole thing. We'll get into what this means beyond its diegetic explanation shortly, but for now, just know that this doesn't just exist for the purpose of being creepy, as it masks something far more terrifying.

What happens at the end of “Men”?

Things reach a breaking point when the man who was chasing him is released from prison. Harper tries to talk about what's going on with her sister Riley (Gayle Rankin) during a series of video calls that are riddled with errors that seem to show something terrible. Soon she also discovers that men start terrorizing her from outside the house. Even though Riley has promised to come over to help, Harper is still left alone for now. Windows are broken as the film follows the chaos in and around the house. In the midst of this, Harper manages to stab one of the men in the arm when he rammed him through the door's mail slot. He then pulls the arm back, slicing it in half as the blade engages. After almost being hit by a car while on foot, Harper tries to regroup back at the house. That's when the tension turns into something much stranger as Garland delivers a display that comes across as a strange body-horror nightmare.

In the climactic scene, the different versions of Kinnear begin to emerge. With all the power of the written word at my disposal, nothing can fully encapsulate the experience of watching this. Harper is only able to watch in stunned silence as it unfolds. As she returns to the house, the various men who give birth continue to follow her inside. Then it seems that he emerges feet first, it's James. Harper, no longer afraid, just sits on the couch next to him. The two talk briefly and James, manipulative as ever, says that all he wanted was her love. The film then cuts to the next day with Harper alone outside as her sister arrives, revealing herself to be pregnant and dealing with the carnage of the previous night's mayhem. No words are exchanged, and the film ends on a rather dark note that mixes with a quiet calm, a respite from the horror we've just seen unfold before us.

What does the ending of “Men” really mean?

Now, what all this really means. One thing that should be clear is this all this really happened. Even though James is gone and nowhere to be found, Harper didn't imagine everything that happened. It's not a dream, a vision, a hallucination, or any such nonsense. This is seen in how her sister sees the consequences of what happened to herself. In addition, in an interview with Indiewire's Ryan Lattanzio, Garland said such an exit would have been “borderline unethical” and “there was never any intention to do it.” Of course, for all the nerds who believe in the death of the author, there may be interpretations that run counter to what was intended. However, all the evidence points in the direction that this is something that was real. More than anything else, the meaning of the experience would be greatly undermined if everything was just reduced to bait and switch. The impact comes from the tangible feeling that something is wrong and that nothing can be done to escape it. This is a film whose ending clearly wants to tell us something beyond a twist ending.

In an interview with vox's Alyssa Wilkinson, Garland said he sees his films as a way to wrestle with deeper themes and ideas “without sounding silly.” Elaborating, he said he tries to “make the cases and the arguments within the films.” men is the most explicit example of this in all of his films to date, as the final sequence makes it clear that he is arguing that the horrors of misogyny are born in every subsequent man to the point where they are indistinguishable from one another. That it all ends up coming back to James hammers this home even further, revealing that Harper will never be able to escape his toxicity as he will only take the form of another man and continue to terrorize her. The similarity of the wound on her husband's mutilated child's hand imitated by the other men serves as a strong connection. It's all part of how this terror is everywhere, with Garland showing how it's firmly embedded in institutions like the church and the police. When Harper comes to them for help, they either don't care or are actively hostile to her well-being. There really is no escape. Even on what was supposed to be a vacation where she was left alone, Harper couldn't escape the all-encompassing reality of living in a male-dominated society.

As for the whole sequence of events at the end, again, looking at the director's words can be helpful. In an interview with The Atlantic's David Sims, Garland described how “by the end of the film, what is notionally the monster is at its most disempowered, its most pathetic, and its most desperate.” This is something that actively undermines the genre and our expectations of it, a gamble that serves its overarching argument. It shows how there is still something unsettling and terrifying about men that is at the same time quite unfortunate. Masculinity posits strength and domination through fear, although, stripped of all its pretensions, it is a fragile construct. It is very dangerous to others to justify its own strength, although it can also crumble when put under the slightest scrutiny. Where the movie monster came from or how it came to be in a literal sense is less important than what it represents. This is what has often been missed by some rather reductive interpretations of Garland's works, and what must be remembered when unpacking men. Whether you like the way it's conveyed or not, its meaning goes beyond the literal and the metaphorical terrors of masculinity that remain all too real.

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