By a cliffside, a woman in a very shiny red rain jacket examines some unusual looking flowers with white petals and red and yellow filaments. Zavvi - The Home of Pop CultureFrom visionary filmmaker Mark Jenkin, the Bafta award-winning director of Bait.

Enys Men is a mind-bending Cornish folk horror set in 1973 that unfolds on an uninhabited island off the Cornish coast. Certainly the dialogue (all post-synchronised, along with the rest of the soundtrack) is clear and integrated with sound effects and Jenkin’s score and some diegetic music. What might they be up to, under cover of darkness, out there on their own, on the moor, with no-one watching. There, a single volunteer ( Mary Woodvine) recording data on an unfamiliar flower finds her lonely daily observations turning troublingly towards the strange and metaphysical, forcing her to question what is real and what is nightmare. We see the patterned grille of a battered Dansette transistor radio in an almost abstract close-up, a rattling red generator located just outside the house and a jar of Seven Maids Dried Skimmed Milk, a fictional brand that foreshadows a strikingly odd scene later on.These essays are followed by film credits and notes on and credits for the extras, including an extended note on Haunters of the Deep by Vic Pratt. Jenkin recorded these while he was making Enys Men, and they were broadcast in short instalments on BBC Radio 4’s now-defunct The Film Programme. Following on from the relatively straightforward, but with moments of strangeness, Bait, Mark Jenkin has made a fascinating, often puzzling film, crossing folk horror with experimental film, a film which will reveal its mysteries over more than one viewing.

At night she reads Teddy Goldsmith and Robert Allen’s A Blueprint for Survival (1972), an early eco-warning placing us in the apocalyptic terrain of TV’s Survivors (1975-77), Doom Watch (1970-72) and the Dr Who serial The Green Death (1973).Most disc booklets have just the one essay directly about the film itself, but Enys Men has generated four. At the start of this commentary track, Mark Kermode lays his cards on the table: Bait was his favourite film of its year and Enys Men is a masterpiece (which he has watched several times now) and will no doubt be one of his favourites of this year. Enys Men is set on an uninhabited island in Cornwall in 1973 and follows the daily life of a volunteer who is studying the flora and fauna of the area.

Special features on the Dual Format Edition include an audio commentary by Mark Jenkin and Mark Kermode, recently filmed interviews, two complementary archival films and more. The flower which the Volunteer is studying begins to grow a strange lichen, which, she soon finds, is growing on her too. The two pipers who had led the girls astray were also petrified, a little further away But what, young Jenkin asked himself, what if the stones were actually alive? Jenkin mentions in the disc extra that his original idea was to mix the film in mono (which would have been period-appropriate for 1973) but thought that was too thin.

Filmed on location around the disused tin mines of West Penwith, it is also an ode to Cornwall’s rich folklore and natural beauty.

As Jenkin explains in an elegant commentary with Mark Kermode which otherwise insists on mystery, she soon slips into a mirror-image of her house, and her mindscape shifts.She finds a rare flower growing and begins to focus on its growth, but as she does she begins a mysterious and metaphysical experience where differentiating between real and hallucination becomes impossible. It was shot in 16mm, and it has a wonderfully desolate look that really pushes forward the sense of isolation for the island, using the Cornish landscape exquisitely. The pace here is slow and dialogue is minimal – with much of it coming via her limited interactions on a battered VHF metal maritime radio. However, strange things begin to happen, and she begins to see visions centring on a large rock, visions of miners, singing children, a young woman (her younger self? The BFI’s booklet, available with the first pressing of this release only, runs to thirty-two pages.