Skip to main content

How anime and seasons shaped that final, wild scene in Men

Alex Garland’s Men has generated plenty of conversation to go along with the praise it’s received from critics — particularly when it comes to the film’s shocking, graphic final scene.

Men is the story of a woman who decides to take a vacation in the English countryside, only to be tormented by something sinister lurking within the quaint little town. The film casts Jessie Buckley (The Lost Daughter) as Harper Marlowe, whose husband’s suicide prompts her to book the rural holiday. Joining her in the film’s small cast is Rory Kinnear (Our Flag Means Death), who portrays multiple characters in the film, including Geoffrey, the friendly owner of the house Harper has rented.

Recommended Videos

What begins as a quiet vacation quickly takes a dark turn for Harper, whose perspective on the terrifying events unfolding around her adds another surreal layer to Garland’s exploration of trauma, gender, and the cyclical nature of creation. Her experience culminates in a final confrontation with her tormenter that delivers — in more ways than one — a scene that has everyone talking.

Note: Key plot points from the film Men will be discussed after this point. Consider this a spoiler warning.

Jessie Buckley holds a knife in a scene from Men.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

“That particular sequence was written as mutations — just as a sequence of mutations,” Garland told Digital Trends of the scene that has Kinnear’s enigmatic, Green Man-like entity cycling through a series of births and rebirths as he pursues Harper from the yard and into the house. (The Green Man is a legendary being primarily interpreted as a symbol of rebirth.)

While the scene begins with a more humanlike birth, it gradually evolves into something far weirder, with each new form sprouting from a different orifice or other point on its predecessor’s body, forcing its way out as Harper looks on in horror. Garland indicated that his fondness for keeping the script flexible and shooting his films largely in their narrative order left the final scene up in the air for quite a while, with only vague ideas about how to bring it to the screen.

“Some people storyboard everything and have an incredibly clear idea of what’s going to happen. I don’t,” laughed Garland. “I say to the actors in the rehearsal stage, this script is still fluid and open and we can make changes and we can find stuff.”

Initially, Garland revealed, the scene was intended to have a much more nature-based theme to the transformation.

“There was a kind of loose thought that, because we had this Green Man character, that it would be about seasons — and the mutations would happen via things like green growth coming out of him,” he explained. “If you leave a camera on a dead fox for a week, and then do time-lapse photography of the way it decays and changes, maybe we’d do the mutations like that.”

The exact look and feel he wanted for the scene remained elusive, though, until Garland said he got “kind of slapped in the face creatively” while watching an episode of the popular anime series Attack on Titan with his daughter. The series, which is set in a postapocalyptic world filled with monstrous “titans” that devour humans, features some intricate, unique transformation sequences depicting the evolution of the titans and their relationship to humans.

Rory Kinnear's character stares through a door's mail slot in a scene from Men.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

“[The series] was taking human forms and making, in some ways, subtle changes — ones that leaned in a way I really liked towards ridiculousness,” he said. “I think ridiculousness is an important part of this film, a kind of funny, pathetic-ness in some respects that sits alongside the horror and the strangeness. It’s important that those two things sit right up against each other.

“When I saw Attack on Titan, I could see how inventive and creative it was, and it made me think really hard,” he continued. “I spent that Christmas doing loads of sketches of forms and then that became the birth sequence, basically.”

For Garland, that willingness to not have everything set in stone well ahead of filming is what made that memorable scene possible, and allowed him the time to find just the right way to bring the film’s most shocking scene to the screen.

“I try to go into the whole filmmaking process, from preproduction to shooting and then still in the edit, staying alive to the possibilities, and staying alive to changes, and not feeling things get concretized,” said Garland. “For me, the dream is that somebody watches this film and does not forget about it as they are walking out of the cinema.”

Alex Garland’s Men, starring Jessie Buckley and Rory Kinnear, is in theaters now.

Topics
Rick Marshall
A veteran journalist with more than two decades of experience covering local and national news, arts and entertainment, and…
7 best action movies of the 2020s, ranked
Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick.

As the halfway point of 2025 approaches, it's become clear that the 2020s have been a great decade for action movies. The genre is very popular among the various streamers, but it's also still the top draw at the box office. Almost all of the major hits from the last half decade have incorporated action into the story in some way. It's just what people want to see on the big screen.

It was surprisingly easy to pick the No. 1 film on our list of the seven best action movies of the 2020s. But there may soon be another contender for the throne. And if the second half of the decade produces action flicks that are as good as the movies of the last five years, then this list will look very different in 2029.

Read more
F1: The new footage of Brad Pitt behind the wheel looks incredible
Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, and other drivers line up and stare in F1.

Director Joseph Kosinski set out to make the most authentic racing movie ever made with F1. Judging by the new footage with Brad Pitt behind the wheel, Kosinski might have achieved his goal.

Apple Original Films released the main trailer for F1, the upcoming sports drama from the filmmaker behind Top Gun: Maverick. Sonny Hayes (Pitt) is a driver looking for redemption after a career-altering accident in the 1990s nearly cost him his career. Hayes never lived up to his talent and became known as "the greatest that never was."

Read more
What is DirecTV: plans, pricing, channels, and more
DirecTV hero, May 2025.

DirecTV has been around for a long time, and now you can get the channels you want without a pesky satellite dish. The company's streaming product, once called AT&T TV and then DirecTV Stream, is now simply DirecTV. While it may not be the most popular streaming service, it's worth checking out. It provides access to live TV and an on-demand library like Hulu Plus Live TV or YouTube TV. Although it tends to be a bit pricier, you receive plenty in return.

We've got the details for you here.
Tell me about DirecTV's streaming service
DirecTV Stream has undergone another rebranding and is now known as DirecTV (yes, it's confusing, see below). This change reflects the company's focus on streaming as its primary service. Existing DirecTV Stream customers should not experience immediate changes to their service or packages. New customers will find all streaming options under the DirecTV brand.

Read more