‘Humane’ Review: A Modest Proposal

Caitlin Cronenberg’s feature-length directorial debut, Humane, presents a world where environmental collapse is no longer theoretical. While the full extent of that collapse is never fully detailed, it’s bad enough where people can no longer expose their bare skin to the sun anymore. Naturally, instead of, say, regulating the environmental impact of big businesses, working with scientists, or increasing efforts toward sustainability, the governments of the world collectively decide on going full Thanos: 20% of the world’s population must be culled, and people are being encouraged to volunteer for euthanasia. Those who volunteer are given a $250,000 reward to distribute to their next of kin, and as you can imagine, lower classes and marginalized folks aren’t taking the idea of state-sponsored murder for cash very well.

That’s a hell of a starting point, and it’s one that seems bent on slowly ratcheting up the tension into white-knuckle terrain, especially as we meet the York family. The patriarch, Charles (Peter Gallagher), a retired newscaster, and his wife, Dawn (Uni Park), decide to volunteer for the program, against the protests of the rest of his family: a right-wing government apologist (Jay Baruchel), an ice-cold pharmaceutical company exec (Emily Hampshire), a recovering addict (Sebastian Chacon), and a failing actress (Alanna Bale). Being rich, the problem doesn’t quite hit home for them until Dawn backs out at the last minute when the euthanasia van comes around, and the government must irreversibly insist on taking two bodies to the morgue.

Structurally, Humane has quite a bit in common with 2013’s The Purge, another film with a killer, socially relevant premise that narrows focus on one particular privileged family. Unlike that film, though, Humane falls apart when the social problem starts getting bloody and it shifts into a rather bog-standard slasher. Ultimately, Cronenberg’s film is at its best when it’s doing anxiety-riddled work just letting a family’s opposing viewpoints and life experiences bounce off each other. Baruchel, in particular, comes out impressive here, imbuing his prodigal failson with a Nicolas Cage-y neuroticism that makes even the horrifying callousness spewing out of him compelling to watch, and even more gratifying to watch fall apart under scrutiny.

Charles aside, there’s a genuine banality of evil at play in Humane as these people argue like bored gods over who should live and die, and the tension created when their theoretical arguments get put to the test in reality is good enough to sustain a film. But when the blood starts spilling, that tension releases in a conspicuously uninteresting way, and for far too long, without even the benefit of that unassailable gruesome mean streak that Cronenberg’s famous father and brother bring to the table when it comes to matters of the flesh.

Humane’s greatest success is Enrico Colantoni’s Bob, a working-class, neurodiverse schlub whose almost-endearing dorkiness quickly gives way to a detachment from the current human condition, making him a perfect candidate as the guy sent to carry out euthanasia across the land. His callousness in watching people rip themselves apart in fear and defiance makes him the most effective horror in the film, and he never spills a single drop of the red stuff.

Cronenberg vests her images with an eerie, confident power, but that’s more evident in her examinations of the frictions between the characters, and not so much in the tapestry of murder and mayhem that ensues. Unfortunately, too much of the second half is focused on the latter, and Human suffers for it. The film is so much more distressing with characters arguing why their siblings deserve to die than actually watching them try to kill each other.