Enys Men - Review Thread

It is an odd sort of coincidence that the same year we got Skinamarink we also got another highly experimental horror film that feels like something of kindred spirit to it, albeit from something of a different direction. Enys Men, is about a woman who’s isolated on the film’s titular Cornish island (pronounced like “Ennis Main”) and after several days of taking notes on the temperature and plant life kind of seems to have a breakdown and starts seeing things and feels like she’s being haunted by ghosts from the island’s past as well as a rather ominous rock. In this sense it has a bit in common with Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse but there’s no second person here for her to interact with and the goings on are a bit more cryptic. Where Skinamarink thrives off of the 80s VHS aesthetics of “analog horror” this one instead feels more like a missing 16mm film reel that’s been sitting around since the 70s and really captures the specific kind of ugly grime that people and objects from that decade tended to take on. The “horror” here seems to come less from a literal danger (though there is perhaps some of that) than from the descent into madness that it’s imagery is trying to evoke. There’s also a certain sense of folk horror here of an ancient Great Britain whose past is buried beneath the surface not unlike what Ben Wheatley is trying to evoke in some of his trippier films like A Field in England and In The Earth. Like with Skinamarink this isn’t a film I can recommend too lightly though between the two this one might be the one that takes slightly less commitment on the part of the viewer to “get” as it does venture slightly more into conventional storytelling here and there. Worth a look if you’re willing to indulge in a very specific kind of tone piece.