75
As much as Jenkin’s film is hypnotic and strikingly realized, in the final half hour it runs out of tricks up its sleeve.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
100
Cinevue by Christopher Machell
Whereas Bait was a lament for a way of life swallowed up by mindless urbanite tourism, Enys Men is a hymn to sublime, endless time and the hauntedness of existence.
100
It’s open enough to be perceived as a character study, a horror story, or something different altogether. But what is indisputable is the movie’s excellent use of wide shots and close-ups, the gorgeous production design and cinematography, and Woodvine’s quiet but compelling performance.
91
The witchy atmosphere Jenkin conjures is spine-tinglingly devilish, the poetic manifestation of the subject’s deep grief, ever-ambiguous and frosty, taking on the aching melancholy of loss.
90
New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis
At times, Jenkin’s bold, experimental style can perplex; but his vision is so unwavering and beholden to local history that his message is clear: On Enys Men, the earth remembers what the sea has taken.
50
Visually and sonically, Enys Men is utterly intoxicating, but a lack of any nourishing interplay between form and content makes it feel like getting drunk on an empty stomach, alone on an island where everything happens at the same time, and nothing really happens at all.
80
Mesmerizing and mystifying, in equal measure. Enys Men confirms Mark Jenkin as one of the most exciting, original cinematic voices in the UK right now.
91
The Film Stage by Leonardo Goi
Shot by Jenkin on 16mm color negative with a 1970s clockwork Bolex and scored with post-synch sound, the film looks and sounds as a relic unearthed from one of the island’s caves. A chest stashed with stories in turns seductive and chilling, woven into a tale that will keep on unfurling, in an endless and confounding maze.
80
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
It is not exactly a horror film, despite some spasms of disquiet, but an uncanny evocation of how, when left utterly on our own, we spiral inwards into our memories, dreams and fears.
80
The Telegraph by Robbie Collin
It wouldn’t be quite right to describe Mark Jenkin’s Enys Men as a horror film. Rather, it’s the kind of thing the victims in a horror film might watch, just after pulling it from the cellar of a derelict harbour cottage, and shortly before succumbing to some blood-curdling maritime curse.
70
Enys Men is an enigmatic proposition, concerned with atmosphere rather than with story.