Following a global environmental collapse, every nation on Earth is tasked with reducing its population. Over the course of an evening with the York family, ‘Humane’ explores an extreme government tactic to shed a large part of its populace, - through enlistment in a euthanasia programme.
Learning of the dire state of affairs through a news exposition, with people shown queuing for water and using foil-lined umbrellas to protect themselves from harmful UV rays, ‘Humane’ wastes no time in painting the dark dystopia that the Earth has reached. Not aiming for subtlety, Jared York (Jay Baruchel), an anthropologist working with the government is being interviewed on the news, advocating for the extreme measure of the government enlistment programme.
The film quickly introduces the York family – Jared, Rachel (Emily Hampshire), Noah (Sebastian Chacon), Mia (Sirena Gulamgaus) and their father Charles (Peter Gallagher). Having invited his children to a family dinner, Charles reveals to them that he and his wife Dawn (Uni Park) have enlisted into the programme. Much to the children’s dismay, the family processes the news to varying degrees of success and everyone voices their opposition to the elected procedure.
Unable to go through with the procedure, Dawn runs from the house and Charles is faced with the agent from D.O.C.S. Bob (Enrico Colantoni) by himself. Learning that if he does not go through with the procedure, Charles will be imprisoned for life and his assets frozen, leaving his legacy as a beloved television presenter tarnished.
Opting to be euthanized, his children then learn that regardless of Dawn having absconded, the D.O.C.S. agent still needs a second body to fulfill the contract. What ensues is a cat and mouse game of the foursome arguing and inevitably fighting over who deserves or should be sacrificed for the remainder of their fathers inheritance and the chance to live.
Escalating the tension as soon as Bob leaves Jared, Rachel, Noah and Mia to decide who is to be sacrificed, they turn on each other, calling out past misdeeds, current professional and personal failures and eventually turning on Noah as he is the adopted son. With a handful of gruesome and gory scenes, the film cultivates a deeply dark atmosphere, but fails to sustain a thoroughly dismal tone to accompany its heavy-handed social commentary on class inequality, the duplicitous nature of humans in the face of adversity and thinly veiled racial themes.
Attempting to address a vast array of momentous issues, most prominently environmental change and warped political discourse, as aggravated by various news and media outlets, the film fails to focus on an overarching theses, rather choosing to follow the characters as they stray in to their own varying paths.
Delivering a convincing family that has over the course of time grown apart and become a group of strangers, Baruchel, Hampshire, Chacon and Gulamgaus do portray a siblinghood disjointed and estranged, sharing little care or love for the ones that they should be closest to and begin tearing each other down with little remorse. What then seems unwarranted is the quick turnaround in their approach to the situation, once Chacon’s Noah manages to convince the rest of the group to work alongside each other to take down Colantoni’s Bob. Providing for a quick and easy resolution to a grave situation, the film seems to skirt some issues in order to provide for an effortless resolution, undercutting the gravity of its final message.
Concluding on a slightly confused note, the remnants of the York family are seen together at Noah’s concert, as he has returned to performing on stage again, with the events of the night concealed and misrepresented in the media so as to preserve the awesome narrative and legacy of the York name. Returning to one of the threads briefly mentioned earlier in the film, ‘Humane’ ends with a clear message about the misleading nature of how news is reported, inviting the viewers to question the source from which they draw their information.
Bleak and tantalizing, ‘Humane’ offers brief moments of bloody gore interspersed amongst heavy handed social and political commentary. With a few unexpected moments of psychotic levity and an overall dreary tone, the film pushes through a few thinking points but ultimately fails to amount to anything concrete.
Score: 2/4
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