‘The Humans’ Review
R: Language and some sexual material
Runtime: 1 Hr and 48 Minutes
Production Companies: IAC Films
Distributor: A24, Showtime
Director: Stephen Karam
Writer: Stephen Karam
Cast: Jayne Houdyshell, Richard Jenkins, Amy Schumer, Beanie Feldstein, Steven Yeun, June Squibb
Release Date: November 24, 2021
In Theaters and Showtime
Erik Blake has gathered three generations of his Pennsylvania family to celebrate Thanksgiving at his daughter’s apartment in lower Manhattan. As darkness falls outside and eerie things start to go bump in the night, the group’s deepest fears are laid bare.
Thanksgiving gatherings with the family can be the biggest bane of one’s existence, especially if they come from dysfunctional family units. It’s the most anxiety-ridden time of the year (besides Christmas), for you have to deal with other family members’ attitudes, backward ideologies, power dynamics, cross-generational conflicts, and truth bomb shockers that will make everyone erupt. Stephen Karam’s family drama The Humans, based on his play of the same name, captures that aura exceptionally well.
Karam ups the ante with The Humans by making the composition of the shots as far away from the family as possible. Other films of this nature rely heavily on actors’ reactions with close-ups of them performing their asses off with the heft of the script, giving you the illusion of cinematic staginess. In The Humans, you see the majority of the performers as specks most of the time, for you’re witnessing this hectic family gathering from afar. From the moment the Blake family enters a run-down apartment in Chinatown that Brigid (Beanie Feldstein) and her boyfriend Richard (Steven Yeun) inhabit, you feel the chilling claustrophobia that matches the uneasy atmosphere many people face during the holidays. Karam chose the perfect apartment to elevate the eeriness of the film, for it captures the typical personality of an old and rusty NYC apartment, from its itty bitty corridors to the rattling water pipes that have a mind of their own. If you see the film in theaters, you’ll be swept away by the sound design, for the natural elements of this apartment get so loud that it genuinely scares you at times. It nails that uneasy feeling you got when you were a kid walking in the dark at night. Even the unfurnished cracked walls felt familiar (and since I saw this at TIFF, it made me feel homesick).
This film is perfectly framed as a psychological horror while still being a drama. The camera shots make you feel like an eavesdropper as to not evoke a sense of staged theatricality. It’s as ambitious as it is unconventional. I assure you, this is not a horror movie but family gatherings can technically be horrifying. The Blakes spend the film stabbing each other with verbal swords. They go from getting under each other’s skin one moment to being mild-mannered after but harbor certain opinions for future use when another argument starts up. It’s such an organic family method that reigns true and makes this so strikingly down-to-Earth.
The Blakes exude such natural white family energy but the authenticity of their dysfunction in power shifts and the gradual rise of tension is so enticing to watch. The primary substance of this film is a family just going through it during Thanksgiving while being a character actor showcase where everyone provides fantastic performances that keep the film grounded. Richard Jenkins is amazing as Erik, the Blake patriarch, as he navigates this sense of unspoken dread that overtakes him in both body and motion. Jayne Houdyshell is sublime as Deirdre, the headstrong matriarch of the family who often butts heads with her daughter Brigid due to their different outlooks on life. Beanie Feldstein and Steve Yeun are naturally charming in their roles as a loving couple. It’s funny because Yeun’s Richard is best described as if Speckle from Tuca & Bertie was real. June Squibb broke my heart with her powerful presence as Erik’s mom who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. Oddly enough, Amy Schumer also blew me away. This is her first dramatic role and she’s remarkable as Aimee, a lesbian who is going through a bad breakup, avoids confrontation, and makes funny deadpan one-liners. Aimee is the film’s best character, for she keeps to her own, knows when to provide input, and all of her jokes are hysterical. Schumer delivers Daria-type energy with her emotions and this is a perfect showcase of her potential.
Despite being a single-set film, the scene transitions and shot composition become repetitive. The cinematography and camera work done by Lol Crawley (Vox Lux, The Devil All the Time) captures the eeriness that comes with an old rusty NYC apartment and gives you a distinctive feel of claustrophobia. But due to the limited settings, you get constant wide shots of the conversations between family members from across the room. I get Karam’s notion of being unconventional with his direction but it feels like I’m being left out of some good tea. In the words of Kevin Garnett:
Medium shots and even close-ups are a rarity. Some scene transitions were repeated and at first, it’s pretty cool to see it go from an upstairs room to the downstairs area with a steady scroll. But when that transition is done ample times, it loses its flavor. Since the film is a natural slow burn, the repetitive nature of the shot composition slows the pacing down even further. This is a shame because, towards the latter half of the film, Karam takes some big swings visually and emotionally to make this drama transparently frightening, especially with a lingering finale that’s breathtaking. Yet, it's a bit too late on arrival because… well, you can only mileage one location for so long and this is a nearly two-hour-long film.
If you love slow-burning family dramas, The Humans is an accurate portrait of an American family that captures the atmosphere of NYC with nuance in a post-9/11 era. You can feel that lingering anxious mindset through the setting and characters, which is pretty bold. That’s as friggin’ New Yorker as you can get and this is coming from a native who grew up in that environment. The Humans is a stage play made cinematic and it’s enticing to watch if you can stomach its A24™-type pacing. Though not all the beats click for me, it’s a damn fine movie that stands on its own away from its source. I haven’t felt this way about a play adaptation since Kaufman’s Anomalisa.
