The Humans (2021 | USA | 108 minutes | Stephen Karam)
Is there anything more unpleasant than being stuck with another squabbling family’s seething Thanksgiving drama? The Humans, Stephen Karam’s film adaptation of his Tony Award-winning answers: Being stuck with it in a cramped old Chinatown apartment with no furniture, a bunch of secrets, thin walls and shoddy wiring!
Three generations of the Blake family of Scranton Pennsylvania have gathered for the holiday dinner in a freshly-occupied Lower Manhattan apartment. The hosts, Brigid and Richard (Beanie Feldstein and Steven Yeun) have just moved in together and their furniture has yet to arrive. A lifelong school maintenance man, Brigid’s withdrawn father Erik (Richard Jenkins) shuffles around the empty new place alone, silently noting the bubbling paint and water stains on the walls and inventorying the need to caulk to thwart drafts and pets. He and his wife Deirdre (Jayne Houdyshell, reprising her role from the stage production) are uncomfortable in the big city, but have brought “Momo” the family’s wheelchair bound and dementia-adled matriarch (June Squibb) nevertheless. There, they meet their other daughter Aimee (Amy Schumer), fresh off a difficult year of breakups with her longtime girlfriend, career setbacks, and worsening colitis.
The apartment’s narrow hallways, mirrored doors, inaccessibility (the disconcerting layout includes two stories separated by a spiral staircase), and single bathroom becomes an antagonistic character in and of itself. Mysterious and unsettling booms from the elderly neighbor punctuate awkward silences, providing a heavy-handed source of looming menace. And that’s before the lights start ominously burning out. Despite ever-upbeat Richard’s attempts to create “ambiance” with projected fireplaces and tabletop candles, each burned-out lightbulb magnifies the dull horror of navigating a labyrinthine layout by LED lanterns.
Everyone in the family loves each other, but they show it by passive-aggressively nagging each other. Mom lays out a litany of bad news from the family’s extended circle and complains about how all her favorite foods count for too many Weight Watchers points. Dad’s continuously questioning their choices to move away from home, take on debt from expensive private schools, and to move into overpriced apartments in neighborhoods that he deems in peril of flooding and terrorist attacks. (Yes, there’s a kernel of September 11 in their backstory, but the mention of this trauma feels undercooked compared to the economy eroding out from under the middle class.) Both patent regularly work in digs about the high costs of living into every conversation, be it superfood salads or decisions to take a car home after a night of too many beers, and express their discomfort that their daughters have turned to therapy instead of church. Schumer’s Aimee is resilient, often doomscrolling on the rickety toilet for health reasons and emotional escape. Unfortunately, there’s little for June Squibb to do but sleep or mutter in the corner.
As Richard, Yeun is the avatar for the urban sophisticates in the audience who are meeting this family for the first time. He takes responsibility for prepping dinner, making small talk with Erik, and try to put a winning spin over awkward or harsh topics of conversation. But he’s one person against the gloom and ever-darkening night of this family’s discontents.
Karam uses the transition from stage to screen to give the characters some distance and the actors all acquit themselves with performances that don’t explode into high-theatrics under the camera’s gaze. With long shots and roving camerawork and invasive sound design, he emphasizes the claustrophobic apartment’s perilous layout and rarely allows any release from the discomfiting tension. Like some family gatherings, the Blakes are not necessarily easy company and as the evening ticks on it becomes clear that anything resembling closure is an afterthought.
Some may find this emotional spelunking agonizing; if waiting for a tidy resolution becomes too stressful, take some small comfort in the knowledge that the source material is only a one act play.
The Humans premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival; cover image via A24, who will release the film widely later this year.