Shudder Sunday: Humane (2024)

Caitlin Cronenberg’s chillingly plausible and darkly funny “Humane,” explores privilege and sacrifice amidst ecological disaster.

Satire can be pushed to such limits of absurdity that it appears fantastical. Caitlin Cronenberg’s Humane, however, feels less the director’s daydream than a genuinely possible future. And while the film does have its humorous moments—gleaned mainly from the self-serving characters and their desperate attempts to maintain their privileged position—it is more often than not chillingly believable.

Humane begins with the revelation that an undefined ecological disaster has left the world struggling to support its human population.

The governmental solution is as direct as it is callous: all countries must reduce their populations by 20 percent. In North America, people are asked to come forward and “enlist” for euthanasia. The financial incentives offered for enlistment indicate that this scheme relies not on civic duty but on financial necessity—in other words, it is targeted at the poor.

The York family, which is the movie’s center, certainly does not need these monetary rewards. But when patriarch Charles (Peter Gallagher) reveals at a family gathering that he and his wife Dawn (Uni Park) have enlisted and are due to die that very night, the family struggles to comprehend his reasoning. Amidst the confusion, Dawn vanishes, leaving only a note of apology.

Things escalate further when meticulous corpse collector Bob (a fantastic Enrico Colantoni) demands that a second body be provided from those present to satisfy his paperwork, forcing the children of the York family to decide who should die for the others to be spared.

Rather than getting caught up in the technicalities of the disaster as other speculative sci-fi or eco-disaster films might, Humane instead centers on the social politics of the York family.

This is a smart move by Cronenberg and scriptwriter Michael Sparaga because it provides an intimate and relatable form through which to talk about these controversial topics.

Euthanasia and climate change are not easily navigated, but by cutting through figures and the lurid delights of disaster spectacle, Humane is able to investigate the human impact of each.

This is aided by the film’s performances, with Colatoni, in particular, delivering a turn that feels incredibly human in its moral contradictions, with his interactions with the young Mia (Sirena Gulamgaus) providing both heartfelt and humorous moments. Elsewhere, Jay Baruchel and Emily Hampshire bring believable levels of corporate sleaze and do well to embody the ethical flexibility that permits them to resort to increasingly violent measures.

The subsequent scenes of indignation and poorly justified violence are where the film is at its most darkly comical, with each clueless character having to improvise their weapons from everyday items.

HUMANE is a film that, rather than taking a side, wants its audience to ask itself difficult questions.

In this its joins a resurgence of speculative films, from Chie Hayakawa’s Plan 75 (2022) to Fleur Fortune’s upcoming The Assessment (2024), querying the value of human life in a world we have ourselves made uninhabitable.

One thing Humane does make clear, however, is who will ultimately pay the price for this ecological damage.

‘Dying makes all the difference in the world’ says the tagline on the film’s poster, but rather than the cold objectivity of Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, the deficit here is made up by the poor in favor of the wealthy—and this, unfortunately, is the part of the film that is easiest to believe.

While it inhabits a space of moral ambiguity, this alone makes Humane a worthy addition to speculative protest film.

As depressing as it is funny, it ticks all the boxes of horror satire.