At first glance, Mark Jenkin’s horror film Enys Men seems to be about the woman at its center. Referred to only as ‘the Volunteer,’ she’s stationed alone on an isolated Cornish island in April 1973, studying a rare white flower that grows on a wave-beaten cliff. But soon, reality distorts and time bends. Enigmatic visions begin haunting her: a boatman, a group of miners, a children’s choir, and seven women dressed in white.
Are they ghosts of her past? Remnants of grief? Figments from the pressure of isolation? Jenkin avoids offering easy answers or explanations. But a human-first interpretation of the film may miss one important point: Enys Men itself is as important as the protagonist. In Cornish, “enys” means island, and “men” (pronounced “main”) stone. The Earth itself is a major character in the narrative, and the hallucinatory realities the Volunteer stumbles into may come from something bigger than her own mind.
“In Enys Men, the island, the planet may be sentient to remind humanity that it doesn’t care,” Jenkin says, “[The planet’s] just a rock falling through a vacuum. But if you make it sentient, it hammers home the message [of] how fragile we are.”
Jenkin has described his film as an “ecosophical horror,” one focused on human’s relationship with the planet’s survival. He says he’s particularly concerned with what he describes as the “paradox” of our current moment, in which climate change and ecological destruction poses an existential threat to the entirety of humanity.
“We’re at this tipping point where humanity may well destroy the planet,” he says. “But really [humans] won’t destroy the planet. The planet is much stronger than humanity. What humanity will do is destroy the possibility of humanity continuing on the planet.”
In Enys Men, humans, both past and present, are as much a part of the natural landscape as the waves that crash against the rugged Cornish cliffs. The remains of humanity are embedded in the film’s landscape. Every day, the Volunteer unearths artifacts of Cornwall’s industrial mining past: rusty wheelbarrows, dilapidated tracks, defunct smokestacks, and an old sign, which she digs up to use as mantlepiece décor.
And the environment becomes embedded in the Volunteer, too—literally. Lichen sprouts from a scar across her stomach. And her visions are plucked straight from Cornwall’s past, such as the Cornish miners who once excavated the earth and the woman running the mines on the surface, fueling the Industrial Revolution.
Humans, Jenkin says, tend to occupy a “very arrogant space,” assuming an unquestioned dominance over nature. He hopes that the focus on the environment—and the chaos it can unleash on human lives— will disrupt these assumptions.
“It’s very easy to live a life where you think you can kind of [be] separate to the natural world. [But] you’re just part of the natural world,” Jenkin says.
As he succinctly puts it: “The planet doesn’t give a shit about us.”
On Enys Men’s press day at New York Film Festival, I sat down with Jenkin and star Mary Woodvine to get their thoughts on industrial history, Cornish culture, and the ecological crises facing us all.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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Julia Tong: A basic question to start. The volunteer in Enys Men is there to study a certain type of flower. I thought this is such a grounded creative way to anchor the film’s structure. What inspired that premise?
Mark Jenkin: Oh, god, I can’t remember where that flower came from. I wanted to make a film that was set on an island and was effectively a horror film to a greater or lesser degree. And we needed a purpose to be on the island, and I wanted to do something that was linked to the environment, something that was linked to how humans have interacted with the island, with positive and negative results.
The extraction of minerals through the mining was one thing. It was thought of as being destructive, but maybe the mineral, the waste that was then in the land from the mining meant that these flowers were growing there. That’s not in the film—it’s just in my head in terms of the worldbuilding. And I just thought that the purity of white flower, a flower that then began to mutate, was the starting point for that.
Julia Tong: It’s really striking how human the film’s environment is. Obviously it’s very natural, shot on location in Cornwall, but the Volunteer also unearths a sign from the ground and sees things like dilapidated wheelbarrows in the cliffs. She’s also seen reading the environmental classic A Blueprint for Survival. Could you talk more about the environmental facet of the film, this human-nature dynamic?
Mark Jenkin: What I was interested in was the paradox of the situation we’re in at the moment. We’re at this tipping point where humanity may well destroy the planet. But really [humans] won’t destroy the planet. The planet is much stronger than humanity. What humanity will do is destroy the possibility of humanity continuing on the planet.
That’s manifested in this film with regard to this industrial past, which is literally below the [ground’s] surface. But also by the stuff that was on the surface, such as the railway lines and the wagons and all of that kind of stuff, and the buildings all being reclaimed by the environment.
So that’s what I wanted to look at: the arrogance of humans. We think the planet could care less whether we’re here or not. [But] the planet will continue whether we’re here or not.
In Enys Men, the island, the planet may be sentient to remind humanity that it doesn’t care. The planet doesn’t care about us—we need to care about us in order to survive. [The planet’s] just a rock falling through a vacuum. But if you make it sentient, it hammers home the message [of] how fragile we are.
Mary Woodvine: And I wanted the volunteer to feel as if she’s treading as lightly on the Earth as she possibly can. So with her care for the plant and her really careful observation, and there is no luxury. It’s all natural. She’s treading lightly on the land, just trying to be as careful and gentle around everything around her as she possibly can.
Julia Tong: It was also fascinating how, throughout the film, the environment almost becomes part of your character, like the lichen growing in her scar.
Mary Woodvine: Yeah, and that’s what happens to people in natural environments for such a long time. You become a part of it, you become part of the environment—
Mark Jenkin: —or realize you’ve always been part of it.
It’s very easy to live a life where you think you can kind of [be] separate to the natural world. [But] you’re just part of the natural world. A human is just another bit of the of the world. We’ve got into a very arrogant space where we think everything’s about us, but—the planet doesn’t give a shit about us.
Julia Tong: And on the note of humans, I’d love to talk more about the historical inspirations for the film. I write for a very American audience, so they may not be so familiar with Cornish history and culture. But in Enys Men we saw the miners, we saw the smokestacks, which made me think of the Industrial Revolution, and we saw nuns and priests.
Mark Jenkin: Our industrial past is part of the British industrial class, which is the industrial past of the Western world. And a lot of the industrialization, a lot of the breakthroughs in innovation and science, came from the bit of Britain that we live in, in Cornwall.
Hard rock mining was one of the key facets of industrialization. The Cornish were experts at it. [There was a] saying that there was a time when wherever you look a hole anywhere in the world, you would find a Cornishman at the bottom of it, mining. And with a lot of industrialization, the modernization and maximization of the world were things that were celebrated. But now they’re appreciated as being destructive, when we’re looking at environmentalism and climate change and the mining referred to as the ‘rape of the Earth.’
What I wanted to do was represent those everyday miners. In the same way, everyday fishermen get blamed for there not being any fish in the sea and overfishing. But you can’t blame working people for these crimes when actually it’s the economic system that is to blame.
I wanted to show these miners as humans who are toiling away below the earth. And the lifeboat crew that that that speaks to the maritime history of Cornwall. And actually, the women at the end of the film, rather than being nuns, they’re bowmaidens, the women who would have worked above the ground at the mines. We remember [mining] as a masculine thing, but it was, like most things, women that were actually running things.
We just wanted to represent that on screen, that kind of the Cornish history. I’m sure you’ve got examples in America— maybe you look at the far end of Long Island and think of it as an affluent holiday resort, but actually it’s a place that was built on fishing. It’s about countering how something is now being branded. So Cornwall now is branded as a holiday resort. But actually, Cornwall was the beating heart of the Industrial Revolution. I just wanted to put that on screen, and have that there forever as my little attempt to represent where Cornwall came from and what the smarts of Cornwall is.
Julia Tong: Both of you touched on a really interesting idea—making history present, having the past intersect with the now. And that really comes through in the Volunteer’s visions throughout the film. Mary, I’m curious how the Volunteer approaches encountering the past, because she’s such an ambiguous character. She seems to have no past—at least, that’s explained to us throughout the movie.
Mary Woodvine: Yeah. I think it is ambiguous. And we know what she’s doing there, but why she’s there when she chose to be there, to be put in that situation—that was important that I knew for myself.
Julia Tong: How do you imagine her internal thought process? She’s encountering parts of the past, but her face is so calm. In some horror films, there’s often really exaggerated facial expressions, but she seems to accept it.
Mary Woodvine: Yes, I think there were times when in the filming I’d say, “well, at this point, isn’t she just freaking out, shrieking and screaming?” And Mark would go, “no, no, no, she’s really calm. It’s all internalized.” Mark didn’t want it to be a film about a woman being chased around an island in her nightie, or night gown as you say.
It is affecting her, but she’s just absorbing it rather than expressing it. Like you said, it’s not like we expect. We would expect her to be freaking out and running around and she’s not— she’s just holding on.
Julia Tong: We’re coming to the end of the interview. But one thing I really want to ask about is the setting. The landscape is so visually distinctive, with the waves, the rocky cliffs. I’m curious if that affected the creative process. Did you adjust the shoot based on your surroundings? How did that affect your performance, Mary? And what was that experience like?
Mary Woodvine: It was brilliant. I’m never happier than when I’m walking on the cliffs or stepping down rocks or – I like to swim in the sea. And there were days when it was really cold. But the good thing about it was I had a really practical costume. [laughs] I always had a big warm jumper, waterproof coat, comfortable trousers, warm feet. So it was an absolute pleasure filming it.
Mark Jenkin: In reality, there is no island. The wide shot of the island is in Wales. We shot that long after we shot the film. And we never stepped foot on that island, we just filmed it from the mainland. The island is made up of a composite of locations that are all just where we live, so it’s a very familiar landscape. That’s the landscape that we— I mean, we don’t walk to work over the moor, there are roads and cars and the modern world. But that moorland is just next to us.
So it’s sometimes difficult to find the shot of the sea or the landscape that I think is new. Because I see that all the time. I can’t just film a shot of a wave in the rocks! But of course, the 99% of the people watching the film, that’s a new image to them. In the same way that I’ve been in New York for three days now and I’ve just taken so many photos of buildings [laughs] and just pointing at buildings and stuff, because this is so otherworldly to us.
It’s all about what feels exotic and strange. So it kind of films itself: You go out with the camera and you point the camera at stuff, and as long as you’ve got the horizon straight is going to make an interesting image.
Julia Tong: The last thing is if there’s anything that you two would like to talk about, that maybe hasn’t come up before, that you feel like it’s really important to the film that you’d like to mention.
Mark Jenkin: I struggle with that. I just want people to see the film, not for me to say too much about it. The film is the message, and the film is the thing.
I just hope people will watch it in the cinema. Now, it’s important for people to get back in the cinema, to support the industry. But, beyond anything— and I’m talking as an audience member— just to remind yourself what a distinct and incredible experience it is to go and watch a film in a in a theater. Not necessarily our film, but any film.
Mary Woodvine: For me, a woman in my fifties, I felt quite nervous coming to America. I feel a bit worried about people making judgments. And few weeks ago, somebody wrote a review that mentioned it was a middle-aged woman living on an island. And I really took issue with that because it’s a woman living on an island, and it doesn’t help to say she’s a middle-aged woman. Even though I have my own worries, trepidations about that I still think it doesn’t need to be said.
It’s a woman, living on an island. That’s it.
Enys Men had its U.S. premiere in the Main Slate section of New York Film Festival 2022.