Review: The Humans (2021)
“If you’re so miserable, why’re you trying to live forever?”
Family dinners are one of the many things that I never personally understood, I’m not sure why, but maybe it’s the awkward silence between every bite, the years of pent-up frustration and rage waiting to be unearthed by one sentence. All of it feels tense and nerve-racking, which is what I felt whilst watching this movie.
“The Humans” depicts a middle-class family coming over to their daughter’s new apartment to have a Thanksgiving dinner. This sounds normal, almost too normal, but don’t let the premise fool you because under the façade of childhood memories and family dinners, lies something far sinister that this family isn’t able to overcome.
The apartment sort of serves as its own character in the story, giving off an unwelcoming vibe and displaying the financial anxiety the family is currently experiencing. It’s old, damp, a tad creepy, but it’s in New York, so I guess it’s worth it(?). This setting is reinforced heavily with the cinematography, which focuses a lot on narrow corridors, uncomfortable-looking ceilings, and the way it’s shot as if the characters are separated from one another, even though they are in the same place.
As the movie continues, we keep seeing how the three generations of this family interact with each other. With the dad, Erik, and the mom, Deidre, being almost too stereotypically conservative in regard to passion and mental health. This view inevitably clashes with the most recent generation, which is Bridge, her boyfriend, Richard, and her sister, Aimee. From the way they talk, it’s clear that they have a rough history with each other, and no amount of family dinners is going to change that.
We, as an audience, sort of view them through the eyes of Richard, juggling between an observer and a participant in their squabbles. It can’t be helped that, in the end, we are only left to observe some parts of what’s going on with this family, despite our best efforts.
Some scenes in the movie also incorporate horror elements and there a couple of audio-centric jump scares here and there. Which is an interesting choice to be made considering its just a family dinner. But I think these eerie elements really serves their purpose to emphasize just how trapped and broken these people are behind the masks that they wear. At the end of the day, despite all their differences and arguing, they are all haunted by the same ghost, death.
And we are also reminded of this ghost by the grandma. Suffering from dementia, her occasional outbursts due to her mental decline serves as a cold hint as to what is waiting for us at the end of the tunnel. That at the end of the day, whether you like it or not, maybe family is all that we got. I can’t help but feel terrified by this statement, having to confront the void alone just like Erik did in the end, and only having his torn family to come back to.
