“Enys Men” Movie Review

 

“Enys Men”

Movie Review

 

Enys Men  is a 2022 experimental folk horror film shot, composed, written and directed by Mark Jenkin. It was filmed on 16m m film and features Mary Woodvine, John Woodvine, Edward Rowe, and Flo Crowe.

A wildlife volunteer's daily observations of a rare flower on an uninhabited island off the coast of Cornwall in 1973 become a metaphysical journey that makes her and the spectator wonder what is real and what is a dream.

The only feature that suggests a continuous flow of time is the appearance of a fruticose lichen growing on the flowers over three days, and simultaneously on the protagonist's body.

Stone Island is known in Cornish as Enys Men. And that is also where Mary Woodvine's character, The Volunteer, resides. Her seeming only goal in life is to study and measure a plant that grows close to a precipice. In a column of identical entries, she enters them in a log book—this is 1973, therefore it is a real paper book.

She is the only human resident of the island, and the only human interaction she has is with the boatman, played by Edward Rowe, who brings her provisions.

This is acted out by writer and director Mark Jenkin with nearly no spoken words. There is, however, hardly any narrative. She is shown moving back and forth between her cottage and the plant, stopping occasionally to throw a rock down a defunct mine shaft. The generator's clattering noise drowns out the sounds of nature when she occasionally switches it on.

Enys Men has the appearance of being both set and shot in 1973 due to the use of 16mm film to record all of this. Very excellently shot are photographs of the island, its deserted buildings, ocean cliffs, and the standing stone that gives the island its name. But since there isn't even a plot, it's also really boring. The movie simply cuts from shot to shot without any discernible pattern or logic. Jenkin had his justifications, but we couldn't identify them.

Change eventually starts to happen as May Day draws near, and lichen starts to sprout on the plant. Also on The Volunteer. Not that this adds to the intrigue or even the complexity of Enys Men. Even more so than Skinamarink, which at least had voices and a hazy sense of time, the movie is purposefully ambiguous.

We merely occasionally see dancing children dressed for a ceremony as apparitions in Enys Men. a group of former miners on the island. In her bathroom, a second miner shows up and flushes after himself. A priest, played by Mary Woodvine's father John Woodvine, is preaching to an empty church, and Flo Crowe is portraying a young girl who may be The Volunteer.

It's evident that May Day on a British island brings to mind The Wicker Man. The Fog is recalled by the fragment of a long-sunken ship name plank. Day of the Triffids, and the plant's long pistils, which could also be the reason she was reading a book about surviving the end of the world.

What's the overall meaning? Are there ghosts for real, or was she just going crazy from being alone? Is she a ghost that got stuck on the island? Enys Men is art horror with a capital "A," and Jenkin isn't even offering hints, so your guess is as good as anybody else's.

Enys Men, which was produced during the COVID-19 shutdown, had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 2022 and earned positive reviews from critics.

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