Sightlines · reception
How Enys Men was received
2023 · Mark Jenkin · Enys Men on Sightlines
The arc
It premiered in Directors' Fortnight at Cannes 2022 and was sold to UK audiences as folk horror, which set up a famous expectations gap: Mark Kermode gave it five stars while baffled walk-in viewers one-starred it. A few years on it's settled into respectability as an experimental object you approach on its own terms rather than a horror film that failed to scare.
What’s debated
The perennial fight is whether it's hypnotic or just inert — and whether calling it 'folk horror' was a marketing sleight-of-hand that doomed it with genre audiences who came for Wicker Man thrills.
Its footprint
The image of Mary Woodvine's red-coated volunteer standing alone on the Cornish clifftop — a deliberate Don't Look Now red — became the film's shorthand, endlessly screenshotted in folk-horror roundups and 'vibes over plot' lists.
Where it stands
A fixture of the 2020s folk-horror revival canon and a Letterboxd litmus test: low average score, fiercely protective admirers, the classic 'divisive by design' cult object.
Did you know? Jenkin shot it on a vintage clockwork 16mm Bolex camera with every sound added afterwards in post — there's no location sound at all — the same handmade method as his BAFTA-winning Bait.
Named by the director
- Walkabout (1971) — First on the list when Jenkin programmed 'The Cinematic DNA of Enys Men' season at BFI Southbank — Roeg's elliptical editing is the film's clearest ancestor.
- Long Weekend (1978) — Jenkin included this Australian nature-turns-hostile thriller in his BFI 'Cinematic DNA' season.
- Berberian Sound Studio (2012) — Programmed by Jenkin in the 'Cinematic DNA' season for its obsessive, post-dubbed approach to sound.
- Lost Highway (1997) — Another of Jenkin's 'Cinematic DNA' picks — Lynch's dream logic over narrative resolution.
- Two Years at Sea (2011) — Ben Rivers' 16mm portrait of solitary rural existence, chosen by Jenkin for the 'Cinematic DNA' season.
- Nigel Kneale — Jenkin put Kneale's work in his 'Cinematic DNA' season, pointing to the haunted-landscape strain of 1970s British TV horror.