Welcome back for another installment of Review Stew! This week we have the feature directorial debut of Caitlin Cronenberg. If you’re wondering, yes, she is the daughter of body horror master David Cronenberg and sister to Brandon. So, the question is, will she follow in their body horror footsteps? Well, let’s dive into Humane (2024) and find out.
Title: Humane
Director: Caitlin Cronenberg
Released: April 17, 2024 (Toronto, Canada)
Runtime: 1 hour 33 minutes
Available to stream on: Hulu and Shudder
There has been an environmental and ecological disaster that is threatening life as we know it. In order for humanity to survive, 20% of the human population must cease to exist. To help meet this goal, governments have mandated voluntary euthanasia.
Former news anchor, Charles York (Peter Gallagher), has called a family dinner with all of his children. Jared (Jay Baruchel), Ashley (Alanna Bale), Noah (Sebastian Chacon), Rachel (Emily Hampshire), and Rachel’s daughter Mia (Sirena Gulamgaus) all show up for family dinner, confused as to why they’re all there.
Right before dessert, Charles drops the bombshell on his family. He and his wife, Dawn (Uni Park) have decided to volunteer themselves to help humanity reach its 20% reduction point. His children are dumbfounded, unable to figure out why he’d volunteer to do that, let alone without discussing it with them first. As it turns out, Dawn wound up getting cold feet and has run away.
Shortly after, there’s a knock at the front door. The man at the door is Bob (Enrico Colantoni) with D.O.C.S. (Department of Citizen Strategy) and he’s here to perform the procedure on both Charles and Dawn. Charles tries to explain that Dawn isn’t here but if he can reschedule the appointment, he knows that he can get here back onboard.
Bob agrees and hands Charles some paperwork to sign in order to reschedule the appointment. However, as he is reading through the paperwork, Charles has second thoughts. In order to go through with the cancellation, all of his assets would be frozen and worst of all, Charles would be put on the government’s list of cowards for backing out of his appointment.
Choosing to save his reputation, Charles goes through with the procedure. Except, there’s just one small problem…Bob came to collect two bodies but he only has one. But it’s okay, there’s a solution to all of this.
Since Mia is so young, she’s exempt from the program. This leaves Jared, Ashley, Noah and Rachel with two hours to decide amongst themselves who will be the second body to leave the house in a body bag.
Well, if you were hoping to see another Cronenberg dive headfirst into body horror, hopefully you weren’t disappointed. Because with Humane (2024), Caitlin shows that she is more interested in the actual story than the horror elements within it. The story truly shines in the York family’s struggle as they face the heart-wrenching decision of who will join their father in a body bag.
While there are moments where Jay Baruchel is able to put his comedic chops on full display, he sort of felt miscast in the role of Jared. Yes, he’s easy to dislike, especially when more about Jared as a person comes to light. However, I’m not convinced that he was the right fit for the role. The same goes for Emily Hampshire as Rachel. Believable in the role, sure to an extent. Like Jay, Emily really gets to shine when things pick up in the second and third acts. But I wasn’t fully convinced by either of them in their respective roles.
Honestly, Enrico Colantoni as Bob was my favorite character. It is not hard to hate the character given his role, but his dark comedic timing sort of made him a character you both love and hate by the end.
Although I liked most of the performances, the writing kind of did them a disservice. There is a lot of meat on the bone with each character, despite this, we only seem to scratch the service. Everyone is rather one-dimensional and you can sort of pick up on where things for each of them is going.
Overall, Humane (2024) is a solid directorial debut from Caitlin Cronenberg. I, for one, will definitely be on the lookout for what she serves up next.
So, what about you? Have you seen Humane (2024)?
If so, drop a comment or reach out on Bluesky and let me hear your thoughts on it!
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