Humane

I recently watched the Canadian film 🇨🇦 Humane (2024) on Shudder. The storyline follows a global agreement for a 20% population reduction and a wealthy family caught in the middle of the crisis. Some members of the family support the plan, some oppose it, and they even discover that some of them are volunteering to participate. As the process for collecting volunteers unfolds, things take an interesting turn.

This film is directed by Caitlin Cronenberg in her directorial debut, and stars Jay Baruchel (Goon), Emily Hampshire (Schitt's Creek), Peter Gallagher (American Beauty), Colm Feore (Chicago), with a cameo by David Cronenberg (The Fly).

The premise feels like a unique spin on The Purge, with dialogue, perspectives, and circumstances that don't seem far-fetched, which adds to the film's entertainment value. The cast is well-chosen and fun to watch, and the action scenes are great, featuring plenty of slashing, stabbing, and fighting. There are lots of intense moments with stabs, slices, and cuts. While I did find some of the decision-making frustrating at times, it didn't overly detract from the film.

In conclusion, Humane doesn't really bring anything new to the genre but is still worth a watch. I'd give it a 6.5-7/10 and recommend seeing it at least once.

So I won't go into a movie summary since IMDb already does a pretty good job of doing that. It is watchable, but kind of slow to get started. The acting is very average for all involved except for the two main character husband and wife...they of course are quite seasoned. The soundtrack, yea that is really lacking. And actually takes away from many scenes while always playing softly in the background. But where this film is actually quite strong is the cinematography. Whoever the cinematographer was for the movie knew his business. Not a single shakey-cam anywhere. They set up the scenes and and shots it all really well. That is something so new. Typically it is annoying shakey-cam and high school level film class shots. So it's worth a watch.

The concept of this movie is pretty good, government needs to reduce population so pays people to be euthanised. Rich guy invites family round to tell them he's enlisted to do this. All kinda makes sense and can go along with the general idea.

The rest of the movie makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, the company that come and do it, the behaviour of the family, every action, further development of the original concept, decisions of everyone involved, nothing works. There is that single original concept, and thats it.

But actually that single thing was kinda enough to keep watching and see how it plays out, to its inevitable dissatisfying ending.

Nice idea. Ok to watch, could have been waaay better in every single way.

After stumbling upon many negative reviews around here, I felt compelled to share my thoughts with my first review. This film doesn't quite hit the lows that many claim, nor does it reach the heights promised by its premise.

The core issue is rather straightforward: the script (skillfully executed by Michael Sparaga) leans heavily into satire, however, it appears that not everyone involved in the production fully embraced this idea. The film oscillates between moments of absurdity, humor, thriller, and straight-up horror, leading to a somewhat disjointed direction. While there are occasional flashes of comedic bullseyes, the constant comparison to David Cronenberg's esteemed body horror of work is inevitable, despite the absence of substantial horror elements (barring a few graphic close-ups in the third act).

The movie would have greatly benefited from leaning further into its satirical elements rather than focusing primarily on horror and suspense. This failure to fully embrace its comedic side left me feeling somewhat confused. Is it a left-wing nightmare? A mockery of right-wing extremes? Probably neither. This imbalance, favoring horror over absurdist hilarity, likely contributed to the dissatisfaction of many viewers. When the socio-political message becomes too apparent in any form of art, there's a risk of either angering or boring the audience.

Still, if viewed as a satire, the movie with its one-location concept offers an entertaining experience. It serves as a commendable directorial debut and showcases a standout performance by Enrico Colantoni, who knows exactly what kind of movie he's in.

The idea here is necessity of death due to human failure and the focus is on the rich. Death to the rich. Fine, we're all thinking it, but a film about it would have to be nuanced and intelligent because no matter how damaged we are we all want to live. This film pits a few family related shallow characters against each other. No one has any real arguments for prospering. No one has any really good argument for human existence continuing. The film is a continuous stream of political cliches, memes, sentiments you could find on your favorite social platform. This is lazy filmmaking. This is not worthy of your time.