‘Men’ First Trailer: Alex Garland Terrorizes Jessie Buckley in His New A24 Horror Movie

After directing the heady FX sci-fi series “Devs,” Alex Garland returns to the realm of auteur horror with his latest film, “Men.” It stars newly minted Academy Award nominee Jessie Buckley (“The Lost Daughter”) in a role that sounds eerily similar to the woman she played in Charlie Kaufman’s “I’m Thinking of Ending Things”: She’s on a sort of nightmarish vacation trip in the countryside, where something haunting is swirling around in her present, and it has to do with men. Watch the first trailer for the A24 film below.

Joining Jessie Buckley are Rory Kinnear (most recently seen as MI6 employee Bill Tanner in the Daniel Craig James Bond films) and Paapa Essiedu (the “I May Destroy You” breakout who earned a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor playing Wade). “Men” features cinematography from Rob Hardy, who shot Alex Garland’s Academy Award-nominated directorial debut “Ex Machina,” as well as his follow-up science-fiction horror film “Annihilation” and all episodes of “Devs.” Hardy announced that production had wrapped in the United Kingdom on May 22, 2021.

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“Men” is written and directed by Garland, working with an original screenplay, and produced by Eli Bush, Andrew Macdonald, and Allon Reich.

A24 previously released Garland’s “Ex Machina,” which dabbled in elements of gothic horror with its isolated setting (a favorite of Garland’s) and tale of a scientific madman (Oscar Isaac) maniacally building indentured female robots in his lair. Garland earned a Best Original Screenplay Oscar nomination for “Ex Machina,” which earned a surprise Best Visual Effects Oscar win. “Annihilation,” released and pretty much dumped by Paramount before being offloaded to Netflix in foreign territories back in 2018, was also a straight-up psychedelic horror movie with sci-fi roots. While a box-office flop earning $43 million against a production budget of slightly more than that, the movie, starring Natalie Portman on her own existential journey through a mutating nightmare-scape of monstrous flora and fauna, is now regarded as a bit of a new cult classic.

Next up, Alex Garland directs Kirsten Dunst in A24’s “Civil War,” an also-top-secret action epic teaming the British writer and director with the now-Oscar-nominated “Power of the Dog” star for the first time. Dunst is attached to star, along with Wagner Moura (“Narcos”), Stephen McKinley Henderson (“Dune”), and Cailee Spaeny (“Mare of Easttown”). Andrew Macdonald, Allon Reich, and Gregory Goodman will produce the film with A24.

“Men” will be released in theaters on May 20, 2022.

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