Before you read too far, or heaven forbid put a date night-sized dent in your paycheck at the local multiplex, allow me to pose some unscientific questions to gauge your interest in writer-director Mark Jenkin’s new horror film, “Enys Men.”
Do you like your horror movies built mostly out of jump scares and regularly scheduled bloodletting? You know, where a shadowy, often-masked figure or supernatural force racks up another victim every 10 minutes or so while you wait for the climactic showdown with the movie’s protagonist? If so, this movie is in a totally different ballpark.
Or maybe you prefer the slower burning, story-driven style of suspenseful horror that skillfully ratchets up the tension, dropping in at least one unpredictable twist or two before the credits? Nope, still not even close.
Perhaps you’re a connoisseur who subscribes to Shudder and has seen every D-movie, blood dud from your childhood video store; in which case, maybe you want the latest, acutely self-aware amalgam of nerdy tribute, torture porn, and meta-scripting with a side of predictable armchair politics. That’s a hard pass.
But what about a nonlinear, “artsy” horror film shot on grainy, 16mm film that plays like a witchy cross between “The Wicker Man,” an anthropologist’s field diary from the early 1970s, and a lapsed nun’s DMT-fueled dreams bursting with symbols from Cornish mythology, slowly being overtaken by rampant lichen? If that sounds intriguing, “Enys Men” might be your ticket.
Set on an uninhabited, sea-ravaged island off the Cornish coast, this mostly wordless film stars Mary Woodvine as “The Volunteer,” a middle-aged researcher who spends much of the movie going through the same daily ritual. First, she examines a small patch of rare white flowers on a rocky hillside, then on the way back to her stone cottage, drops a white rock down an empty mine shaft. She ends the day in bed reading “A Blueprint for Survival,” an influential environmentalist text by Edward Goldsmith that suggests humans return to living in smaller communities with less of a carbon footprint.
This pattern repeats itself many times, with the only deviation being The Volunteer struggling with a faulty generator that supplies her power, and a sputtering, short-wave VHF transmitter that offers her only contact to the outside world, but usually sounds like it’s conjuring voices from the spirit realm. Every day, she marks down “no change” in her flower notebook (dated April 1973). Until one day, there is a change – which soon begins to manifest itself everywhere, including on her body.
The movie’s title, pronounced ‘Ennis Main’ and translated as “Stone Island” in Cornish, gives very little away – and neither does the threadbare plot, as much as you can say there is one. It’s best not to tick off too many details, but this color-saturated, tone poem of a movie feels more like an unfolding dream, wherein the viewer collects bits and pieces of haunting detail and tries to construct if this is a nightmare driven by some deep, lingering regret – and which parts, if any, are based in reality.
I’m not steeped enough in Celtic mythology to get all the references here, but I was impressed by the filmmaker’s relentless, singular vision. Jenkin did nearly everything in the making of the film, from writing/directing/shooting it on a hand-cranked Bolex, to creating the spooky sounds on a synthesizer. Known for his previous film, “Bait,” the filmmaker concentrates on formal elements from the boxy, 4:3 aspect ratio, to the rich, earthy color tones, the jarring and intrusive sounds that break the spell of cinematic poetry, and the close-ups and swooping zooms that feel straight out of the ‘70s.
I thought the repetitive visual flow was mesmerizing at times, particularly as the woman’s strange visions begin to spread, mixing in with the history of the island, slowly taking over and running amok; though I was a little let down by the ending. Before it was over, however, I was already thinking I needed to watch it again. Maybe a couple times.
Then again, I don’t mind movies that make you work. A day later, I’m still trying to decipher what “Enys Men” was about, or whether it would fit better in an art museum. All I can say after one viewing late last night, is that it seems to be a meditation on memory, and humankind’s environmental predicament – oh, and lichen plays a major role, as does a Cornish landscape that feels almost sentient.
For now, let’s keep it simple and just say if you liked Robert Eggers’ “The Lighthouse,” or Shirley Jackson’s “The Haunting of Hill House,” there’s a good chance you may appreciate this for its boldness of style. For many, it’s probably going to be too frustrating for its refusal to play by normal narrative rules; or too annoyingly “out there,” as if the VCR footage from “The Ring” was given the full-length treatment by a David Lynch disciple.
As noted in a recent Hollywood Reporter review, when Jenkin presented the film at the British Film Institute, he quoted the great French filmmaker, Robert Bresson: “I’d rather people feel a film before understanding it.”
More than anything else, that applies here. So keep it in mind.
