Enys Men (2022)
Director: Mark Jenkin
Screenwriter: Mark Jenkin
Starring: Mary Woodvine, John Woodvine, Edward Rowe
After the critical success of his breakout film Bait (2019), Mark Jenkin arrived on the scene as a distinctive voice in British independent cinema. His follow-up, Enys Men, delayed by years of anticipation and the complications of the pandemic, represents both a continuation and an evolution of his signature style. While it will inevitably be judged against the promise of his earlier work, this new film confirms Jenkin as a director willing to push his visual and narrative language into darker, stranger territory.
Where Bait was notable for its grainy black-and-white imagery, blunt dialogue and post-synched sound design, Enys Men revisits many of those auteur traits and reworks them for a different tonal purpose. The most striking shift is the film’s use of colour: Jenkin embraces lush, analogue colour film photography that evokes the look and mood of 1970s British cinema while offering a modern, painterly palette. The result is both nostalgic and unsettling — a beauty that often conceals unease.
Enys Men is a deliberately spare film, shaped in part by the limitations and protocols of lockdown-era production. Its narrative is minimal: a lone woman (Mary Woodvine) lives isolated on a small Cornish island around 1973. The precise reason for her presence is never spelled out; she appears to be tending to or observing a rare flower, suggesting some sort of scientific or personal project. The uncertainty about her purpose is intentional, and Jenkin refuses to fill in the blanks for the viewer.
The woman and the island function as mirror images — both weathered, both bearing unseen histories and private traumas. As images and sequences fold together, past and present blur, forming a haunting mosaic rather than a conventional plot. Enys Men runs about 90 minutes, and those minutes accumulate into an experience that is puzzling, hypnotic and difficult to shake off. Instead of unraveling mysteries with tidy explanations, the film tightens them, leaving impressions and questions that linger long after the credits.
Ghostly apparitions, ambiguous flashbacks and ritualised actions populate the island: the woman checks temperatures of plants, drops a stone down an old mine shaft, repeats small superstitions. These repeated gestures anchor the film while also inviting multiple interpretations. Are the figures and moments supernatural visitations, fractured memories, premonitions, or symptoms of a deteriorating mind? Jenkin deliberately keeps answers out of reach, allowing viewers to construct their own readings. Each viewing can reveal new details and shift interpretations, which is part of the film’s lasting appeal.
The film’s atmospheric horror is rooted in isolation and sensory tension. Watching Enys Men in a dark room, you feel the same focused unease as the protagonist — hyper-aware of image and sound, scanning the frame for a clue, anticipating something unseen. Jenkin uses sound and visual interruptions to great effect: long, quiet observations are suddenly broken by a jarring image or a harsh, amplified noise. These abrupt shifts are used sparingly but decisively, manipulating audience attention in ways that can be deeply unsettling.
Technically, Enys Men demonstrates Jenkin’s growing command of cinematic tools. He adapts the aesthetic strategies that made his debut distinctive and reshapes them for a new emotional register. The deliberate pacing, the focus on texture and material detail, and the careful framing of the Cornish landscape all contribute to a film that feels both stylistically consistent with his earlier work and freshly inventive in its own right. The visual composition and measured use of colour are key to the film’s atmosphere; they transform the natural environment into a character in its own right.
The performance from Mary Woodvine anchors the film with a quiet, enigmatic intensity. Her presence carries the narrative’s emotional weight — she conveys resilience, loneliness and an undercurrent of unresolved pain without resorting to exposition. Supporting gestures from a small cast further populate the island’s world, but the film remains fundamentally centered on this single, fragile perspective.
Enys Men is not a conventional horror with jump scares and tidy explanations. It is a meditative, unsettling piece of cinema that merges folklore, memory and psychological disquiet. For viewers willing to engage with its elliptical storytelling and slow-burn atmosphere, the film offers a rich, haunting experience that rewards contemplation and repeat viewings.
Score: 20/24