Humane

A environmental collapse forces world leaders to take extreme measures to reduce Earth's population, and one wealthy and privileged family is completely fine with this situation, that is, until they are the ones who are being asked to sacrifice.

Humane is the feature film directorial debut of Caitlin Cronenberg, daughter of filmmaker and Body-Horror King David Cronenberg. As a result, Humane has a surprisingly good cast—Emily Hamphire, Jay Baruchel, Peter Gallagher, and Enrico Colantoni, amongst others—for being such a subpar film. Nothing like Daddy's connections, right? Never doubt the Nepo-Network in Hollywood.

Meanwhile, the plot of the film can basically be summed up by the viral tweet posted below, a quick missive that will now live forever, as it’s 240 characters skewer the very core of "The Problem with America."

So, in the film (and also in real life soon enough), despite literal decades and decades of continual warnings, humanity is caught completely unprepared by a global environmental collapse that brings society to its knees.

And so, since it’s a now more of an immediate question of the continuation of the species, hard decisions must be made. In an effort to mitigate the looming issue of the complete extinction of humanity, world leaders decide that global populations must be decreased by 20%. To do this, each country has a prescribed quota, and if a country doesn’t meet its quotas, then the rest of the world will destroy it. Once those quotas are met, the math says that those who are left will have a very good chance of surviving the hard times to come.

In the U.S., the Department of Citizen Strategy (D.O.C.S.) is in charge of meeting America’s quota. Their plan involves a campaign encouraging American citizens to enlist in the war against extinction.

Enlisting means volunteering for Government-assisted suicide.

Posters declare that “Enlistment means Opportunity,” because the hook of enlisting is that the families of those who do enlist will receive a large payout, an amount of money that is more than enough to pay for the kids’ higher education, or possibly homeownership. Because of this, the volunteers tend to be older in general, people at the ends of their lives, or people living in poverty and thinking of their children’s futures, or prison inmates with long sentences, or the terminally ill, or also the mentally ill or the despondant, and even undocumented immigrants too, as their loved ones are also promised a fast track to citizenship. Millions of citizens sign up for this as a result, and the D.O.C.S. Euthanasia Technicians are kept busy, scuttling between appointments, escorted by armed D.O.C.S. agents. But despite these large numbers, there still are not enough signing up, and on the news, there are some prominent voices who are beginning to discuss the idea of conscription instead of enlistment.

So...

At the stately manor of legendary news anchor Charles York, the entire family is invited for a special dinner. Charles is retired and living comfortably, his legacy as a beloved and trusted voice of America secured. His latest wife is a former celebrity chef named Dawn Kim, who had her restaurant burned down by White anti-Asian bigots. His four adult children are the controversial D.O.C.S. Spokesperson, Jared York, the embattled pharmaceutical CEO responsible for the euthanasia cocktail, Rachel York, the baby of the family and struggling actress Ashley York, and Noah York, a fresh out of rehab former addict who was adopted as a child from Central America. Rachel's young daughter Mia is also there, even though, technically, she wasn’t invited. The reason she wasn’t invited is because the point of this dinner is so that Charles can tell his children that he and Dawn have decided to volunteer to enlist. The kids are upset about this, but they’re mostly upset because, they don't want Dad to kill himself, of course, but also... enlistment isn’t for people like them. This isn't something they want to say out loud, so they all dance around it. The kids get even more upset when they find out that Charles has scheduled he and Dawn’s euthanasia for that same evening, right after dinner.

This is literally their Wake.

Unfortunately, before the smarmy D.O.C.S. technician shows up, a man named Bob, Dawn has changed her mind, and cut and run.

This is a problem because, with Dawn absent, Charles wants to cancel until he can talk to her, but D.O.C.S. doesn’t allow for cold feet, and any cancellation would freeze the family assets and brand them as traitors. Fearing for his legacy, Charles decides to go ahead with the procedure.

The second problem comes immediately after Charles’ death, when Bob informs them that the York family legally owes him two bodies, so one of them will need to take Dawn’s place. Sam holds Mia in the D.O.C.S. vehicle, as her age exempts her from enlistment, while the other four are given the two hours before his next scheduled appointment to decide which one of them will die.

The three biological white kids immediately turn on the adopted brown one.

There’s a lot of back and forth after that, lots of stabbings and double-crosses and that kind of shit, including the weirdly unnecessary inclusion of Noah’s girlfriend, Grace, a black woman, who showed up after receiving his emergency text, and was then gunned down in the driveway by trigger-happy D.O.C.S. agents. I'm not saying it didn't feel realistic, I'm just unsure why it was even included.

Anyway, in the end, the kids turn on Bob and the other agents, and that’s where things get really muddled, and everything putters to an unsatisfying end.

Humane is not just a COVID allegory, but an obvious commentary on wealth inequity and white privilege in America too. It features an aging white patriarch, a man who built his wealth off a lifetime of slinging misinformation and stoking fear, and clearly shows that not only is he the entire root of the whole problem, the fact that he'd rather check out then make amends, and is more concerned with his own legacy to the detriment of the next generations', is what ends up wrecking his own world, as well as everyone else’s. It also features his children, the spoiled, greedy, ugly, and indignant spawns of privilege, a group who is more than willing to turn to hate and cruelty for their own benefit, people who, when the chips are down, do not hesitate to prioritize family and race over goodness or morality. And this all takes place in a world where overpopulation and the climate crisis has led to authoritarianism and forced euthanasia. This is terrifying to consider, because it’s a situation that it is not all that unlikely a future in our own world too. It's a potentially interesting premise, with a lot of potentially interesting ideas behind it.

But this is all concept, not execution.

Because that’s the main problem here, the film seemingly has no idea what to do with any of its ideas. The social commentary woven throughout the story, touching on racism, the climate crisis, authoritarianism, fascism, classism, the privilege of the white and wealthy, even nepotism, are intriguing, and all have very real-life touchstones in today’s world to lend them some credence. But for the most part, it all feels superficial. The film just skims the surface of these ideas, and bounces off without really saying anything about any of them. On top of that, it’s shot like a tv show, and features characters who are not at all engaging, all of whom do nothing but make unbelievable decisions.

In short, this is a potentially interesting story that is told in a very uninteresting way, and then it just falls apart at the end. Like I said, the only scary thing about the whole film is how possible this whole nightmare scenario truly is.

Still, I’m sure there will be more than a few white Americans out there who will claim that this satirical skewering of the base cruelty of White Nationalism, of the naked hypocrisy of American Christianity, of the ugly racism inherent in the very culture of White America, not to mention the greed and entitlement of the wealthy and the privileged, is way too obvious and unfair. They’ll probably try to claim that this story of their burlesqued mirror images, with their too familiar unwillingness to take personal responsibility, or to accept the consequences of their own actions, is a little too “on the nose” for them.

The usual bullshit, basically.

Myself? I think it’s safe to say at this point, that if we’ve learned anything during this era of Trump and COVID, it’s that, one… when it comes to storytelling in this country, you can never be too fucking obvious when it comes to your satire, and two… the reason those people are always ready to make the same kinds of excuses that they always make is because hit dogs holler, know what I mean?

So, anyway, the worst part about this film is the turn at the end. First off, it isn’t at all believable, or earned, and the logistics of it don't really make sense. Secondly, it’s a weird eleventh hour swerve away from punishing the system and the people who support it, and opts instead to allow the characters use their privilege to work the system to their benefit. I can't say for sure whether or not this was meant to be a commentary on the realities of how the American system was built to enable and support the White and Wealthy, but after watching it, I don't think so. In general, the film doesn't feel that self-aware, and certainly doesn't have any teeth to it. So, no, it’s just disappointing, and falls far short of having any kind of righteous and subversive message, which all feels like it was mostly done this way due to straight-up cowardice.

Which makes sense, honestly.

Because if the film had stayed the course, it would’ve been about a very dark, but completely accurate commentary on modern day American society, something that is probably too scary for a neophyte nepo-baby director, who is clearly hoping for a commercial career, to try to attempt to pull off.

So... yeah, this isn’t a movie with much to say, and what little it does say isn’t very well done, but still... it does contain the kind of thought experiment that should terrify you, if you're willing to spend a little time considering how plausible a scenario it really is.

Pass.