Critics reviews

Sparaga’s script starts with a clever premise... But it then has almost no idea what to do with it, as Cronenberg's film dissipates into a series of unbelievable decisions made by people we don't care about, shot in a surprisingly flat style.

If “Humane” doesn’t have the same density of, say, “Cosmopolis,” it still showcases a confident director who excels at world-building but not as much, perhaps, on fleshing out fully-rounded characters.

If Brandon absorbed daddy dearest’s predilection for body horror and new flesh, then Caitlin has clearly studied his razor wit and grasp of metaphorical social commentary.

Most of the scenarios “Humane” presents feel only a few clicks away from possibility, and the ethical questions it raises, while only shallowly explored, are disconcerting... This isn’t a movie with much to say, but it’s the sort of thought experiment that will keep you up at night.

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.

There’s never any sense of a wider world beyond the narrative; once the doors close, so does any interest in what’s going on over the other side, the dystopia a convoluted MacGuffin designed to set a claustrophobic tale of family backstabbing in place. However, once the film shifts into conventional-thriller territory, it proved engrossing enough that I never felt I needed to learn more about this socially fragmented dystopia.

Once [the] script pivots to parlor game pitching and horse-trading—as family members jockey for favorable standing with one another—Humane loses more than a bit of its punching power. While a broader treatment of its concept would have no doubt cost much more... Humane also comes to feel very much cornered, and hemmed in by its own creative choices.

The horror [in Humane] is more existential than visceral, all pitched to a distinctly black-comedy wavelength. Think the toxic-sibling drama of Succession meets the chamber-piece antics of Arsenic and Old Lace.

[Caitlin Cronenberg] lightens the weight of her last name by privileging social commentary over creative violence in a drably styled debut more driven by the moral rhetoric of its plot machinations than it is by the nightmare imagery it’s able to manufacture from them.