Enys Men (Cornish for 'Stone Island') has been on my radar since its 2022 release. I had heard whispers of a strange, unsettling folk horror film and when I saw that it was available to stream, I put it on my watch list. Three years later, I finally got around to watching it and wanted to share my thoughts on this strange work.
Director Mark Jenkins has delivered a singular work that transcends conventional genre boundaries, crafting a cerebral piece with a dread that transforms isolation into a terrifying, liminal ritual.
The plot, to the extent that I understand it, centers on a volunteer (played with quiet fortitude by Mary Woodvine) conducting a solitary study of a cluster of rare white flowers on an uninhabited Cornish island. Her simple, daily routine of checking on these seven blooms begins almost immediately to fracture. This fracture is marked by unsettling repetitions, spectral choral singing, and apparitions of herself and others, suggesting the environment itself is degrading her grip on reality.
Jenkins’ film is not a horror film in the conventional sense; it is a meticulously crafted feat of dread for the viewer who understands that the true terror lies not in the jump scare, but in the existential disquiet that burrows and persists. I think the film touches on profound themes such as mental health and the feeling of being an outsider in a sacred or unfamiliar space. This existential dread is amplified by Jenkins' meticulous aesthetic choices. His commitment to texture is paramount to the film’s effect, as it is shot on grainy 16mm film stock. The aesthetic is immediately reminiscent of the 1970s—a spectral appreciation of the setting that calls back instantly to the visual language of the classic folk horror "Unholy Trinity": Witchfinder General, Blood on Satan’s Claw, and, most profoundly, The Wicker Man. The saturated colours are used to heighten the unnatural—the shocking, blood-red of the titular flower, set against the deep, earthy greens of the cliffside, feel deliberately wrong, coating the entire film in an unnatural, ritualistic veneer.
Paired with the creepy, often dissonant synth and ambient sound design, the film fits well within its genre forebears while maintaining a unique, modern disorientation. By tapping into the parochial elements of Cornish history—the miners, the stones, and the old ways—but presenting them with a dreamlike illogic, Jenkins achieves the universality of folk horror. This is not a quaint warning about an English island, but a localized, chilling eschaton speaking of ancient paganism and deep, annihilatory belief. The horror here is fundamentally the horror of the cycle—the belief system that views destruction as a prerequisite for transformation.
The film shares the strange, location-specific horror DNA of Penda's Fen; the narrative doesn't always make sense, but you instinctively know that the land portrayed holds immense power. Furthermore, this transcending of locality also connects Enys Men with non-European folk horror traditions, echoing the inescapable supernatural themes seen in films like Japan's Kwaidan and Onibaba or the bleak medieval desperation of Russia's Viy.
Lastly, the film’s quiet, landscape-driven introspection also shares stylistic and narrative commonalities with games like Dear Esther, Firewatch and Oxenfree. Intriguingly, I felt the unmistakable fingerprints of the Covid-19 era all over it: the acute sense of isolation, dwindling supplies, and the desperate need for human contact and connection. While the seven white flowers clearly symbolize the relentless passing of time, the film powerfully invites—and demands—such deep symbolic analysis.
Overall, I didn't quite know what to make of Enys Men; it offered no easy answers, only the inescapable feeling that you had witnessed an ongoing ritual of introspection and timeloops. It is a challenging, atmospheric and insidious film but I'm not sure if I liked it or not.
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