HUMANE -- Caitlin Cronenberg's Directorial Debut Is Dragged Down by Michael Sparaga's Ridiculous Script

Review by Sean Boelman

Alanna Bale, Sirena Gulamgaus, Peter Gallagher, Uni Park, Emily Hampshire, and Jay Baruchel in Caitlin Cronenberg's HUMANE. Courtesy of Steve Wilkie. An IFC Films & Shudder Release.

A movie with the pedigree of the Cronenberg name should really be making a bigger splash than Caitlin Cronenberg’s feature debut, Humane. Thus, with its relatively low-key release, it will come as little surprise to cinephiles that Humane is, frankly, not very good, suffering from wildly uneven writing by Michael Sparaga, who wastes the potential of his premise. 

The film is set in a near future, where humanity is on the brink of a collapse due to an environmental catastrophe, and a program has begun where people can be voluntarily euthanized in exchange for a substantial payment to a beneficiary. A family finds itself at a difficult crossroads when their father announces he plans to enlist in the program.

While this premise is incredibly intriguing, the novelty of the idea wears off after the first act, leading to a remaining two-thirds that’s extremely contrived — sometimes even laughably so. Although the antics are mostly entertaining, they’re so ridiculous that it’s hard to take the movie seriously. At a certain point, the lines between the intentional dark humor and the laughter it elicits from ham-fisted writing become indistinguishably blurred.

Humane is the type of movie that wears its message on its sleeve. No audience member will walk away remotely confused about the film’s environmentalist and anti-capitalist messages. While this horror-tinged sci-fi premise could have been a thought-provoking way to explore these themes, Sparaga’s script seems far less interested in provoking thought in viewers than telling them how they should think and behave.

Jay Baruchel, Emily Hampshire, and Alanna Bale in Caitlin Cronenberg's HUMANE. Courtesy of Steve Wilkie. An IFC Films & Shudder Release.

However, the main area where Sparaga’s script falters is that it does not give the audience any characters to care about. There have been plenty of satires about rich, unsympathetic a**holes that have worked quite well, but Humane does not join those ranks. The intention is clearly to remind the audience of our need to reconnect with our humanity by showing us characters who are so egregiously severed from it, but it’s hard to really resonate with this decision if you’re rooting for most of the characters to die.

Still, despite the utterly flat archetypes of characters they are given, the talented cast manages to make the most of their roles. Jay Baruchel and Emily Hampshire are both gleefully over the top, and Sebastian Chacon is the most grounded of the cast. However, it’s the supporting cast that shines the brightest. Peter Gallagher’s turn is utterly commanding, carrying the first act (that ends up being the strongest portion of the movie), and character actor Enrico Colantoni is the only reason viewers will remain invested in the back two-thirds.

Apart from a few graphics — like fake newscasts and public service announcements — whose quality does begin to show the film’s budget, the below-the-line aspects of Humane are mostly solid. It’s not a particularly gruesome picture, with only a few short (but effective and impactful) bursts of violence. Instead, Cronenberg opts to build tension through claustrophobia and does so quite well within the confined setting.

It’s a shame that Humane is Caitlin Cronenberg’s feature directorial debut because she’ll be blamed for many of the movie’s problems that really lie with Michael Sparaga’s script. It’s really not possible to tell if she has the same juice as her brother (or her father, for that matter) until she gets her hands on a better script. As for the movie itself, it’s torn down by tedium and heavy-handedness.

Humane hits theaters on April 26.

​Rating: 2.5/5