Humane

Here’s a cheerful premise: Our future will be so grim that people deemed by the government to be a drain on resources will be obliged to step up for euthanasia. That concept powered the 2022 Japanese film Plan 75, and it provides some electricity — some — to the dystopian thriller Humane, directed by Caitlin Cronenberg from a script by Michael Sparaga. In a few years (presumably), the deteriorating climate will result in a serious shortage of water and other natural resources, so the government makes a deal: At least one adult from every family must agree to die. Their survivors will get a decent chunk of change. They will pass into the great unknown mystery knowing they sacrificed (or were sacrificed) for the greater good.

The world-building in Humane doesn’t concern itself very much with some questions we may have (will birth control be mandated?). We see a few snippets of news on TV, some featuring Jared York (Jay Baruchel), an anthropologist working with the government on this morbid endeavor. Jared’s rich, famous father, anchorman Charles York (Peter Gallagher), has called Jared and his three other grown children to his home for dinner. When everyone — including addict Noah (Sebastian Chacon), embattled CEO Rachel (Emily Hampshire) and her teen daughter Mia (Sirena Gulamgaus), and aspiring actress Ashley (Alanna Bale) — has gathered, Charles drops the news: he and his wife Dawn (Uni Park) have decided to volunteer themselves for the cause — to “enlist.”

Charles is out of the picture in half an hour or so. His wife gets cold feet and flees, complicating matters greatly: the people who arrive to administer the enlistment, led by the amiable Bob (Enrico Colantoni), have to take a second body to replace Dawn. So the grown kids fight (often physically) over which of them is going to provide that body. Humane becomes a one-location thriller (it could be adapted to the stage with little trouble) in which four characters with varying degrees of pain in their lives try to defend their continued existence. That could be boring, but Cronenberg keeps things short and briskly paced, with a mitigating sense of humor — bleak humor, to be sure, but enough to humanize the brittle, often objectionable characters. 

Humane doesn’t seem to aspire to more than that; the world is narrowed down to one well-appointed home and one set of siblings squabbling. So it becomes an actors’ showcase, though the drama often devolves into stabbing, strangling, and gunplay. None of these people seem especially capable of fratricide, though I guess part of the satirical point is that these pampered bourgeois kids, who have grown up and into their own self-abusive flaws, turn easily and coldly to violence. I almost would rather have followed Bob and his partner from house to house, seen what they see — kind of the inverse of Asphalt City, in which a couple of guys go door to door saving lives, not taking them. 

But this is the Humane we got, and for what it is it’s crisply rendered. Of the three filmmaking children of Canadian master David Cronenberg (who contributes an aural cameo here), Caitlin seems to have inherited the old man’s dark sense of comedy, while Cassandra (based on her 2013 short Candy) got his erotic aesthetic and Brandon (judging by the two of his films I’ve managed to sit through) got his fixation on body horror. Put them all together and you have David, I suppose, just as combining the Corleone sons gets you Vito. Caitlin Cronenberg has an easy way with actors; her style is smooth, not off-putting or confusing. I’d like to see her write her own script next time, though, follow her own muse.

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