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The Humans Movie Review

The Humans is a 2021 psychological drama film directed by Stephen Karam and starring Jayne Houdyshell and Richard Jenkins. It is a very disappointing movie.

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“Don’t you think it should cost less to be alive?“

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Erik Blake gathers three generations of his Pennsylvania family to celebrate Thanksgiving at his daughter’s apartment in lower Manhattan. As darkness falls and eerie things go bump in the night, the group’s deepest fears are laid bare. This movie was based on a famous play and it even brings back one of the actresses, Jayne Houdyshell. I love stagey dramas usually, which is why I was excited for this one, but I ended up not caring for it.

The main issue here is that even for me as a fan of these dramas the movie seemed way too theatrical and this material was just not fit for a cinematic treatment. The result is this rather slow, boring drama that is all over the place in how it treats its characters and plot points.

Not much happens, yet the atmosphere is always there. The film’s biggest strength is the house itself that acts as sort of a dangerous sign. Nobody here is happy and the house acts as a metaphor for the characters’ many problems, especially between one another. The eerie sound design was the highlight as the movie became quite creepy in its horror-influenced third act.

But still, this would have worked much more had the characters been better developed. The acting is great with Richard Jenkins delivering the strongest performance. It was also wonderful seeing Beanie Feldstein, an underrated actress. But despite all the good acting, the characters themselves were underwritten.

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The Humans does have some very interesting sequences. The dialogue is excellent as you’d expect from its source material and the characters’ dynamics are intriguing, but the movie also failed to gain engagement from audiences as the pacing is too slow and it has too many characters for its own sake, thus leaving many underutilized. The directing also needed to have been much better.