Enys Men

Seems most people either love it or dislike/hate it... I liked it but probably won't watch it again anytime soon. I don't have a clue about the regional legends, folktales or cultural markers the movie is said to reference.

What I do have is a lot of patience and quite a bit of imagination. It also helped that it was screened at a folk horror event so I had some context for it. Thus the film did keep my interest as I tried to piece together WTH was going on, and creating a story within my head as the movie went on. The atmosphere is eerie and the movie overall is experimentally interesting so I think the director is on to something, I'd just hope his next effort would be something where I don't have to create most of the story for myself.

Go see if you're ok with experimental, slow-paced stuff that doesn't offer you much answers.

Avoid if you want your horror with action and explanations, and have a low threshold for experimental stuff.

This is mostly a response to these depressing reviews. Have you never watched a moody film before?

You should already know from Bait that Jenkin is an experimental filmmaker. It's an unconventional film which is about experiencing a mood and atmosphere. The film won't spoon feed you the same storytelling tropes you've already seen a million times before, so if that makes a film "bad" to you then stay away. Don't try to understand it, just watch it.

I much preferred this to Bait. I liked the sound design, the blurring of nightmare and reality and the body horror elements.

What's he got against lichen, though?

I enjoyed Bait, Jenkins' previous film so I had an idea of his odd dated style. Bait had a much more conventional narrative whereas Enys men is very layered, rhythmic and dream-like. Things like linear time and space are almost blurred occasionally. This film is highly symbolic in an almost Lynchian sense. It's unsettling in a psychological way and not in a traditional horror sense. The horror is from everyday tragedy and the haunted memories this creates.

The film is unfortunately rather boring because of the highly repetitive nature of the same person doing the same boring routine day after day. What this film lacks is stylishness and modernity. Jenkins seems obsessed with the ordinary and mundane. There are several close-ups of seagulls flying, waves crashing, woman making tea, reading a book, over and over again..... But if all you show in your films in the ordinary mundanity of life then your films will be feel that way to the viewer. Slowly more unsettling/bizarre elements are fragmented into this bland everyday existence but it doesn't break up the dull pacing.

At least after the end of the film me and my friend felt compelled to question what it all had meant. What was the point of this symbolic image or that one.

The main theme seems to be about complex unresolved grief. Grief that haunts us over and over. Survivor's guilt - what we should have done to save the person but didn't do. However, there is something more complicated than one person's grief being explored here. There is a whole Island's worth of historical grief but it is unclear how that relates to the main character in the film.

I couldn't say I would recommend this film. Maybe someone more familiar with the type of grief it was exploring would get something more out of it.

Enys Men has beautiful shots, great zooms, interesting atmosphere, and an unsettling tone. But what do you get when you have beautiful shots, great zooms, and interesting atmosphere without a full story? You have great pictures. You wanna make great pictures? Become a photographer. These great filmmaking attributes do not add up to anything without a story. And yes, I know there's a ghost story here....but barely. And it's 100% based on sumbol and metaphor. Never go full metaphor. Why am I supposed to care? I love experimental films. Persona is one of the greatest movies ever made, but there's so many layers and depth to the characters and ideas that we are exploring on top of the abstract filmmaking. Mark Jenkin shows here that he can direct. But he also shows he doesn't know how to write. If he can figure that out, he could make something worth while.

A woman lives in isolation on a small island off the coast of Cornwall studying its nature. She lives in a small cottage powered by the generator she must run and every day follows the same seemingly tedious routine of study, dropping a stone down an old tin mine shaft, drinking tea and going to bed reading a book on survival by candlelight. One day she discovers a new flower and starts to see visions of people from the island's past, many who have apparently been killed, she also appears to grow the same lichen on her body that has started growing on the flower.

It is fair to say per general criticism that this is a film rich in atmosphere and very little else. Nothing much happens and quite what does is heavily open to one's own interpretation. It is though unnerving, somewhat spooky and indeed rich in atmosphere as it plays heavily with temporal rules. I kinda 'enjoyed' this eerie film which has a mood which feels like a cross between The Wicker Man and an M. R. James ghost story but probably needed a tad more in the way of explanation / closure if I'm honest.