Alex Gar­land piv­ots into out­right hor­ror with the first trail­er for Men

If you’re Jessie Buck­ley, you’re hav­ing a pret­ty good week. Just yes­ter­day, you received your first Oscar nom­i­na­tion for your work on The Lost Daugh­ter, mean­ing that every­one is now legal­ly oblig­at­ed to say ​“Acad­e­my Award nom­i­nee” before your name for the rest of your life. Then comes today, as a new trail­er posi­tions you at the van­guard of this year’s slate of indie film releases.

The inter­net got its first peek at Alex Gar­land​‘s new film Men today, in which Buck­ley por­trays a woman, of all things. But it seems that the tit­u­lar gen­der still fig­ures sig­nif­i­cant­ly into her life, marked as it is by her con­stant fear that some malev­o­lent pres­ence won’t leave her alone – as men are wont to do.

Her char­ac­ter has gone on a solo hol­i­day to the Eng­lish coun­try­side, where she hopes that the nat­ur­al lush­ness and qui­et soli­tude might help her process the grief from a recent, unspec­i­fied ​“per­son­al tragedy.” But something’s out there, in the dis­tance yet with­in view, just close enough to scare the absolute beje­sus out of her by shak­ing the fruits from a tree, look­ing through her post-slot, or prowl­ing around a graveyard.

In the past, Gar­land has inter­wo­ven ele­ments of hor­ror – sus­pense, para­noia, bod­i­ly muti­la­tion – into the sci-fi genre, but with his lat­est fea­ture, he’s mak­ing the full genre piv­ot. While the visu­al pro­file of the film is more sedate than your giv­en slash­er pic­ture, Buckley’s per­for­mance appears to be in line with the ​‘scream queens’ of yore, as she con­stant­ly scram­bles for her own sur­vival while staving off the ter­ror bear­ing down on her.

For Buck­ley, it’s a con­tin­u­a­tion of a hot-streak now stretch­ing across years. One of the most excit­ing young actors work­ing right now, she’s rack­ing up high-pro­file direc­to­r­i­al col­lab­o­ra­tions one after the oth­er – it’s only a mat­ter of time before her name lands in the Acad­e­my Award con­ver­sa­tion once again.

**Update, 23 March**

The full trail­er for Garland’s lat­est has arrived, expand­ing on the premise (turns out the hus­band leapt off a build­ing to his death, and she saw it hap­pen in slow motion) and the tenor of the ter­ror (ghost­ly and earthy).

https://​twit​ter​.com/​A​2​4​/​s​t​a​t​u​s​/​1​5​0​6​6​1​6​7​5​8​4​0​4​2​14785

Men comes to cin­e­mas in the US on 20 May. A date for the UK has yet to be set.