The tedious folk horror tale "Enys Men" is a case of plenty of folk but no horror.
Writer-director Mark Jenkin (2019's "Bait") immaculately captures the look of a 1970s British import, so much so that "Enys Men" looks like it could have been found on an isle somewhere, where it went unseen for the last five decades. He gets the grainy, faded look of the film stock (it was shot on 16mm), the slow-paced sensibility of the storytelling, the slightly un-synced sound of the dialogue and even the occasional vinyl pops on the soundtrack. Style points are through the roof. But the mystery of the story he's telling remains buried under lock and key.
Mary Woodvine plays a character known only as the Volunteer, who sticks steadfast to her daily routine. It's springtime 1973, and she lives alone on an island off the coast of Cornwall, where everyday she puts on her red windbreaker, visits a cliffside cluster of flowers and takes the temperature beneath the soil. She then climbs back up a hill and drops a rock down a deep well, waiting for it to hit water below. She returns home and marks down her findings in a notebook.
At home, she fires up her generator, takes a bath, and reads "A Blueprint for Survival," often by candlelight. Very little changes from day to day.
Very.
Little.
And then, slight changes. Lichen begins to appear on the flowers, and also on her. She has a rather large scar across her abdomen, and begins to sprout some growth herself. What's it mean? It's wide open to interpretation, since Jenkin is short on clues.
The Volunteer is also visited by visions of a young girl, perhaps her younger self, as well as the souls who have been lost to the nearby seas. Time begins to loop, or is maybe undone altogether. She is haunted, but the film is so reserved, so mannered in its presentation that it hardly registers on a visceral or on a tangible emotional level.
In look and approach, "Enys Men" is a little bit "Midsommar" and a lot bit "The Wicker Man" (the 1973 version, not the Nicolas Cage freakout), but doesn't manage to connect the way either of those films did. It also recalls this year's "Skinamarink," another highly evolved exercise in lo-fi horror where viewers are braced for the arrival of something that is ultimately left to the imagination. Depriving audiences of the Big Bad Scare is one thing, there's a lot to be said for subtlety. But it's another to leave them alone, grasping at straws.
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'ENYS MEN'
Grade: C-
Not rated (nudity, adult situations)
Running time: 1:30
How to watch: Now in theaters
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