Metacritic-Rezensionen

There’s something both reassuring and terrifying about it all, the family’s resilient warmth and togetherness providing comfort as the existential horror of what it all amounts to chills us simultaneously.

The film is a remarkably insightful and powerful portrait of the human condition.

The writer’s adage that the specific is universal comes fully alive in this family drama, written and directed by Stephen Karam, based on his Tony-winning play.

Karam makes an auspicious directorial debut, one that captures all the tense, rattling mood of his stage horror while giving it a new, decidedly cinematic shape.

The result is a stilted and unnerving film that chips away at the petrified staginess of its origins with every sudden noise, as if Karam were sledge-hammering little cracks into the hull of his film’s WASPy modern family.

The cast is dynamite across the board. The way they converse with each other feels wholly natural, as if they've been talking for years.

The Humans is a marvel of slight shifts in tone and rhythm, guided by a uniformly strong cast of actors who deliver naturalistic performances which show the cracks in their characters’ pleasant veneer.

In the aggregate, Karam’s directing is so meticulously composed about conveying the density of what’s unsaid, and the mood around the people instead of the people creating the mood, that “The Humans” can feel a bit suffocating.

The Humans spends its time inside its own head when it should have been putting more effort getting into ours.

As a film, The Humans provides serrated frights and big challenges for its actors, but ultimately, it is too cold and never believable enough to immerse one in its purported dread.