Interview: Men's Jessie Buckley and Rory Kinnear find the humour in making a horror

A new Alex Garland film was always going to attract attention – and the fact that he hasn’t made a movie since Annihilation in 2018 has given an extra lift to the anticipation surrounding Men, which opens on 1st June.

After his seductive sci-fi, Ex Machina and the reality warping of Annihilation, he offers us something of a psychological horror, but one rooted in the darker side of folklore. It centres on Harper (Jessie Buckley) who, following the sudden death of her ex-husband, retreats to house in the Cotswold countryside to find some peace and start to heal. But the beauty of the setting conceals less comfortable secrets. Something or someone from the woods seems to be stalking her and, while some of the locals in the village are welcoming, others are the complete opposite. What starts as a feeling of dread soon turns into a nightmare, feeding on her guilt and innermost fears.

For Buckley and Rory Kinnear, who play the main roles in the film, it was a story that leapt off the page when they first read it. In the exclusive interview below, they talk about their individual reasons for wanting to be in the film – Buckley describes Garland as a “visually unique film maker” and that it’s “good to jump off a cliff with somebody like him!” – and how they prepared for the final sequence of the movie, which involved seven hours in make-up for Kinnear.

He also describes how the of the cast and crew reacted to the multiple characters he plays in the film and the two recall how his ability to make people laugh on the set helped keep the atmosphere light. And, while there was one particular instance when he was behind the entire cast and crew being in stitches for half an hour, he’s keeping the reason for it close to his chest!