It’s snowing, one character observes in The Humans, gazing through a murky window. No, says another — an upstairs neighbour just emptied their ashtray. Bleak reality shoots through this supremely angsty film, directed and adapted by Stephen Karam from his acclaimed Broadway play. Brigid (Beanie Feldstein) and Richard (Steven Yeun) haven’t been together all that long, still in the throes of new love, but both, we soon discover, are dealing with personal and professional setbacks. Brigid’s parents Erik (Richard Jenkins) and Deirdre (Jayne Houdyshell) seem chippy, her sister Aimee (Amy Schumer) has her own troubles, while Brigid’s grandmother (June Squibb) is in a wheelchair, with Alzheimer’s. It’s a tough time all round: conversations are spiky enough even before prejudices and resentments bubble up, threatening to bring down the whole façade. Also, the apartment is rotting.
There’s much symbolism here, not all of it subtle, and the film’s theatrical roots are never quite extinguished. But it doesn’t matter: Karam and cinematographer Lol Crawley make ingenious use of the space. It’s an awful cliché to say that a place is A Character In Itself™, but here it really, really is — the building is alive, and Crawley does gorgeous work with it. It’s all sad hallways, hazy light, dirty mirrors and fuzzy reflections, some of it bringing to mind the beautiful everyday photography of New York’s own Saul Leiter.
With the long takes and economical editing, it all adds up to an effective exercise in anxiety.
Meanwhile, the camera creeps about, observing the family like a killer, stalking through corridors, gliding down the levels of the apartment, like an indie take on David Fincher’s Panic Room. The whole thing has a sniff of horror about it. Ominous sounds courtesy of the building’s inner-workings range from eerie to terrifying; water drips down walls like an alien threat. With the long takes and economical editing, it all adds up to an effective exercise in anxiety. And we’re stuck in there with them as, eventually, the underlying malaise makes way for more explosive revelations, and the genre leanings really ratchet up.
Making it all work are the humans themselves. A couple of characters are given shorter shrift than others, but there are great performances here, certainly from Jenkins, the most reliable actor in the business, and especially from Houdyshell, who also played Deirdre in the original Broadway play and won a Tony for it. It’s not exactly a fun time at the pictures, but it’s an engrossing one.
