- Directed by Alex Garland
- Written by Alex Garland
- Stars Jessie Buckley, Rory Kinnear, Papa Essiedu
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 40 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pt81CJcWZy8
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This has impressive acting, beautiful settings, amazing makeup and effects, and a story that neither of us were quite sure we completely understood. It’s strange and interesting; one highly recommended to check out for yourself.
Synopsis
Harper has a bloody nose and watches a man falling outside her window. She moves to a big house out in the countryside. Geoffrey, the owner, comes to the door to let her in. She’s rented the place for two weeks. He shows her around, and it’s a nice place but awfully big for just her. It’s a ten-minute walk to the town. He’s weird but seems harmless. He asks about her husband since she’s a “Mrs.,” but she avoids answering.
We get a flashback to Harper and James talking about death. He threatens to kill himself if she leaves him. James is the man we saw falling. He sees she’ll have to live with the guilt of driving him to do it. She says he’s threatening her, and he says it’s just a warning. We don’t see what he did, but he likely followed through on his promise.
Harper goes for a walk in the woods. There’s a long, dark tunnel, and she plays around with the echoes. Until a man at the other end runs toward her, she goes the other way to avoid him. She then comes to a bricked-up tunnel and takes a different route home. She comes across some abandoned houses, which also creep her out. She takes a picture of the place but sees the strange naked man standing there.
We flashback to Harper finding James’s body half-impaled on a metal fence after jumping to his death. She does some work on the computer, and we see the naked man walking through her backyard. She doesn’t see him, but he’s definitely not trying to hide. Then she does see him and calls the police.
The police arrest the man, and in the meantime, we flashback to James punching Harper sometime in the past. Later, she visits the town and stops at the big old church there. She has a breakdown over what happened with James and just sits there crying for a while.
On the way out, she finds a creepy young man in a plastic Halloween mask who wants to play hide-and-seek. He calls Harper a stupid bitch. The priest comes to Harper’s defense and asks her what the crying was about. She tells him what happened with James. James didn’t jump to his death, he was trying to climb down into her apartment from the one upstairs and fell by accident. Or maybe it was a suicide; she can’t be sure. It’s the uncertainty of his intent that haunts her. The priest isn’t as sympathetic as she was expecting.
Time passes. Out in the woods, the naked man inserts a leaf into his scalp. Harper goes to the pub and runs into Geoffrey there. The pub is full of men who look a lot like Geoffrey. Because Rory Kinnear is playing all the men in the village. Which she doesn’t seem to notice or register. The policeman comes in and explains that they had to release the naked man about an hour ago, he didn’t really do anything harmful. Harper gets upset and goes home; we see the naked man following her again.
Harper calls her friend Riley and says she’s returning to the city, right now. Riley says to stay put, and she’ll be there in a couple of hours to join her. Harper tries to send Riley the address, but her phone keeps breaking up. She gets a text, “I already know where U are, stupid bitch.” She looks outside and sees the policeman there standing in her yard. She goes outside, and he vanishes, then all the apples fall off her tree.
Geoffrey comes in and finds that a big bird has broken into the kitchen window. He doesn’t see any strange men around, however, and he goes to look around. Geoffrey vanishes, and the naked man appears, covered in thorns and spikes and leaves that he has stuck in himself. He blows dandelion bits at her. We see flashes of things that haven’t happened. The man sticks his arm through the mail slot, and she cuts it badly with a knife.
Then it starts getting weirder. We see the boy with the mask playing with the dead bird. His arm is wounded where she cut it in two. Then the priest comes to visit while she’s hiding in the bathroom. She sees that his arm is cut up as well. He asks her about her virginity; he’s become sexually obsessed with her and blames her for it. She ends up stabbing him and walking out.
She gets in the car and drives off. She hits Geoffrey in the road. He pulls her out of the car and she sees that he has the weird arm now too. He steals her car and drives it off, leaving her stranded. He chases her back to the house and wrecks the car, breaking his leg.
The naked man appears again, and he’s looking more and more like a pregnant tree. He starts singing and giving birth at the same time. The child crawls out and looks just like all the other men, except he’s pregnant too. This child gives birth to another version that looks like Geoffrey again. This one gives birth to one more. All these various children have a split arm and broken leg. He gives birth to yet another, this time coming out feet first, and it looks pretty painful. This one looks like… James, her dead husband.
Harper goes to the fireplace and picks up a hatchet. He talks to her, and points out that when he fell, his arm got split on the iron fence, and his ankle was broken, just like the creatures we’ve been seeing. He says, “This is what you did.”
Morning comes, and Riley arrives as promised. She sees blood everywhere. We see that Riley is visibly pregnant…
Commentary
Rory Kinnear plays all the men. All of them— Geoffrey, the naked man, the policeman, the child, and everyone else. I guess this is a not-so-subtle way of telling us all men are the same? Watching him play five different characters at once in the pub was fun. Did the naked tree-man give birth to the entire town?Are there no women in the town? There’s a female police officer who appears at one point; did she not see that all the men look alike (We both felt that Kinnear should have played this character too).
The scene with the door, the knife, and the arm was unique and well done, although maybe just a touch overdone. The birthing scenes are also extremely unique and gross.
This is very weird. I have no idea what it’s really about. Grief and sex, I suppose, but that’s not clear. Overall, it’s very strange and unique. I absolutely liked it!