Within the space of four months, three experimental visions of horror have graced cinema screens, each filtered through a different tonal and genre prism. Skinamarink mined skin-crawling unease from analog atmosphere and liminal spaces; The Outwaters took found footage into the Mojave Desert and the Lovecraftian terror lurking amid the rocks. Now Enys Men is director Mark Jenkin fusing scratchy ‘70s grain and folk horror unreality in an aesthetic-oozing, bracingly unmoored nightmare.
With Jenkins also acting as the composer, cinematographer and script writer of Enys Men, his latest returns to the textured intimacy of 2019 film Bait but strips away conventional narrative and style until all that’s left is surreal symbolism and unnerving imagery. The title’s Cornish translation of “Stone Island” may be an accurate description of setting yet evokes a sense of inhospitable isolation that captures Enys Men’s tension between nature and human presence. Mary Woodvine plays the lone (seemingly?) woman stationed on that stone island, acting as a researcher or botanist of some kind. In her stone home, the structure oddly in contrast with the barren surf-battered landscape, she records notes on changes in local flower growth. Day in, day out, no change recorded, as the film settles into a monotonous rhythm of research, roaming, radio calls and quiet recreation. It doesn’t take long for the monotony to feel like a coiled spring, luring us into a repetitious ease. Between the editing and the monolith that breaks up the rolling landscapes, the experience starts to straddle vaguely ritualistic intrigue and the psychological fever dream of something like Robert Altman‘s Images.
And much like Images, the slightest deviation to that established monotony feels jarring and uncomfortable. Gradually blooming lichen spreads and with that encroaching growth comes signs of human traces and activity: a raincoat washed upon the rocks, echoes from within a mineshaft, increasingly garbled signals on the radio. Jenkins allows the changes to act as both a growing collection of symbols and eerie intrusions to the island’s normalcy. Singing children, a woman precariously on the roof, a young girl watching from the corner; as more presences diffuse into the edit, Enys Men raises the question of what the film is even showing the audience. A psychological shattering made manifest, a descent into madness, some past guilt brought roiling to the surface of Woodvine’s controlled poise? Whether mental or arcane, the onslaught of mundanity and questions upon questions can feel as unceasing as the lichen that finds its way onto disturbing invasive places. The eco-horror edge here might recall environmental chillers like Phase IV or Long Weekend as well, both of which treat humans as interlopers among natural order; in its most unnerving moments, Enys Men similarly blends body-, eco-, psychological-, and folk- horror that chills even if the narrative still comes across as a puzzle yet unsolved.
Even once the final minutes arrive and Jenkins’ film erupts in a jarringly violent denouement, Enys Men’s surreal revelations and resolution remains hazy. Whether that inspires a second viewing or leaves one frustrated, the low-key recalibration of ‘70s-style phantasmagoric unease makes for an undeniably unique addition to this year’s experimental film pantheon.
Photo courtesy of NEON
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