A remote island somewhere off the coast of Cornwall (Enys Men means Stone Island in Cornish), gulls glide by, water crashes against the rocks, and, other than that, very little ever seems to happen. That's the unassuming start to Mark Jenkin's new 'experimental folk horror film' Enys Men. One in which he went so far as to make the soundtrack. Though with a little help from Gwenno.
Only one person appears to live on the island. A unnamed wildlife volunteer (played by Mary Woodvine). She lives alone in a cottage where she listens to her Dansette, reads Edward Goldsmith's A Blueprint For Survival (over and over again), drinks tea, contacts coastguards via some form of ham radio, and regularly pops out to the garden to charge up a crude generator.
Which acts almost like as ASMR fantasty. Each day she wakes up, puts on her walking boots (lots of close ups of them) and her red waterproof jacket, and goes for a walk around the island. She looks at some flowers and throws a stone, or a rock, down what appears to be a seemingly endless well. When she returns home she makes notes in a journal. The notes consist of the date (it's April 1973), the temperature (which rarely changes more than a percentage of a degree), and what observations she has made.
Most days this amounts to simply "no change" but, to give you some idea of the intentionally glacial pace of the film, one day there's an exciting new entry. Lichen has grown on the flowers. But it's not only growing on the flowers. It's growing on the volunteer's body. Across a diagonal scar she has on her chest. What caused this scar? Is it real? Is it a nightmare? Or is the volunteer slowly going mad due to her isolation in this desolate and lonely place?
In fact, is this place even that lonely? Other people appear but it seems that only we, the audience, can see them. The volunteer, it seems - and nothing is certain in this eerie parable, can only sense them. There are miners, dead coastguards - possibly from a disaster 76 years ago that is commemorated on a plaque in the harbour, and there is a young woman (Flo Crowe) who could either be the volunteer's daughter, a ghost, or even the volunteer herself in her younger days.
It's never fully explained but I certainly came away with my own idea of who she was. The only person who arrives on the island that the volunteer can seemingly see and talk to is a boatman (Edward Rowe) who, in a pivotal scene, drinks tea and eats a scone with her. Later she fantasises, or perhaps reminisces, about having sex up against a wall with him.
Enys Men is spooky in places but it's very very slow. Its natural home would probably be an art gallery rather than a cinema. In places it reminded me of one of those creepy public information films from the 1970s and with its constant references to megaliths and nature it reminded me, at times, of Children Of The Stones or even The Wicker Man.
But, unlike other folk horrors, it never fully reveals its hand. You wait for it to resolve but as the film goes on you realise that that will probably never quite happen satisfactorily. You leave the cinema with an itch. That's good film making. It's not for everyone, some will find it pretentious and boring, but it is a fascinating, beautifully filmed, feast for the eyes and mind. If you let it be.
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