The Scare Salon

Pretty much every serious horror fan knows who David Cronenberg is, and even more ardent fans will also know that Cronenberg’s son Brandon is a legit filmmaker in his own right, responsible for the excellent films Antiviral, Possessor, and Infinity Pool.

But what may be less well known is that Cronenberg also has a daughter named Caitlin, a highly regarded photographer who recently decided to get into filmmaking. Her first foray, 2024’s Humane, has less of the sterile, body-horror weirdness of her father’s and brother’s work but definitely has its own darkly comic charms. It’s a satirical survival horror with a sociopolitical sci-fi edge, sometimes going slightly heavy-handed with its messaging but retaining a compelling tension throughout as we watch mostly unlikeable characters engaged in a pointed battle to the death.

Set sometime in the near future, Humane posits that climate change and other factors have caused massive environmental disasters, such that the planet can no longer sustain its population. The world’s governments, therefore, have instituted a program whereby people may “enlist” to be euthanized to lessen the burden on everyone else. The family of the enlister receives a quarter of a million dollars as an incentive. The world of Humane looks largely like our own, with most of the stated crises being shown in TV news footage.

At the beginning of the movie, respected and now-retired journalist/newscaster Charles York (Peter Gallagher) arranges for his four adult children to have dinner with him and his celebrity chef wife Dawn (Uni Park) at their house. The couple is clearly very wealthy, living in a gorgeous Victorian mansion far away from the problems plaguing the rest of the world, or so it seems.

The York offspring are a pretty mixed bunch, but all are confused as to why they’ve been summoned to the family estate. They all obviously have contentious and/or distant relationships with their father, who it’s implied was never there for them while they were growing up as he was always working. The adult children consist of Jared (Jay Baruchel), a snide, condescending anthropologist who is often in hot water for his controversial opinions about expanding the candidate pool for euthanasia; he also abandoned his wife and his son Lucas to run off with another woman.

Then there’s Rachel (Emily Hampshire), a cold-blooded, self-centered bitch who’s universally despised by the public because of her position as the CEO of a pharmaceutical company that was recently responsible for several deaths. She has a teenage daughter named Mia (Sirena Gulamgaus), who is delightful and also a bit of a wiseass; she was actually not invited to the dinner because dad Charles only wanted adults for reasons that become clear later, but Rachel was forced to bring her anyway because of scheduling issues.

The two more sympathetic characters are Ashley (Alanna Bale), a vaguely hippie-ish young woman who is struggling to make it as an actress, and Noah (Sebastian Chacon), who was adopted into the family. He was a piano prodigy as a child, but later spiraled into drug use, eventually killing a woman in an accident. He got clean and seems to have put his life back together, even falling in love and moving in with another recovered addict, Grace (Blessing Adedijo).

When everyone arrives at the mansion and sits down to Dawn’s fabulous meal, it’s immediately apparent that none of these people like each other very much (except for Ashley and Noah, who are portrayed as very close). Rachel in particular is annoyed at being asked to the house for some mysterious purpose, and demands to know (in a swear-filled rant) what in the actual fuck they’re all doing here.

Charles finally admits that he and Dawn have volunteered to be euthanized; they feel that it’s the right thing to do for humanity, they say, and because they’re both public figures, they hope that their sacrifice will inspire other wealthy people to follow their lead (as up to now, due to the large cash payout, it’s mostly been members of the struggling working class “enlisting,” to no one’s surprise).

The children are all livid; Ashley accuses her father of only doing it for the reputation of the family name, since all of his kids are such disappointments, while Rachel bluntly asks Dawn if this was her idea or if Charles pressured her into it. The whole conversation gets very heated, with the implication from at least two of the adult children that enlisting is just for”those people.” Charles tries to defuse the situation by telling everyone to chill out for a bit before dessert so they can discuss things calmly.

Tensions are still high, though, and become even higher when it’s discovered that one, Dawn has changed her mind and has fled the house to parts unknown; and two, that Charles had actually scheduled the euthanasia for that very evening, so that all his children would be there with him and would hopefully be able to reconcile with him before he died.

The horrified offspring find this out when agents of the privately contracted D.O.C.S. (Department of Citizen Strategy) show up at the door with all the paperwork and equipment in hand. The contingent is led by the bald and irrepressible Bob (Enrico Colantoni).

Charles explains to Bob that Dawn has done a runner, and that he’d like to cancel the procedure and do it at a later time, after he’s found her and talked some sense into her. Bob doesn’t seem too fazed by this, taking Charles into another room to ostensibly fill out the cancellation forms.

However, something seems to go amiss with the paperwork, the exact details of which we don’t find out until later, because Charles decides to go ahead with the euthanasia anyway. After it’s done, the adult children are a bit sad but mostly relieved, believing they can send Bob and the crew on their way and get on with their lives, now with a big inheritance in store.

But not so fast, says Bob. His contract is for two bodies, not one, and he doesn’t particularly care who the second body belongs to. His next appointment is two hours hence, he says, so the remaining Yorks have two hours to figure out which of them will volunteer to be euthanized. The Yorks protest, telling the crew to go get Dawn, since she’s the one who signed up for this shit. Bob tells them that he does have agents out looking for Dawn, but if they don’t find her in time, he still needs a stiff by the appointed hour. Mia is out of contention because she’s a minor, but the four York progeny have to make a decision, or one will be made for them.

The rest of the movie, then, is a fight for supremacy, as the Yorks try to determine which of them sucks the most and should therefore put their own head on the chopping block, and it eventually descends into them straight up trying to murder each other.

Humane was extremely entertaining and much funnier than I was expecting; the humor is very dark but totally on point, with some of the dialogue making me laugh out loud. As I mentioned, the characters are mostly hateable assholes, but are interesting to watch, especially when the shit really starts to hit the fan. The interactions between Bob and Mia as they wait in the mobile morgue outside for the Yorks to make a decision were a particular highlight for me, yielding some of the most hilarious lines.

I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call it a horror comedy, but it definitely has elements of satire, and though it’s a bit on the nose in parts, I was so invested in the situation that it didn’t really bother me too much. In tone, it sort of reminded me of similar dinner-party battle royale flicks like Would You Rather or You’re Next, but with a slightly dystopian veneer. It’s not “Cronenbergian” in the way that David’s and Brandon’s work is, but it’s great that Caitlin Cronenberg is developing her own individual style apart from her famous family.

Recommended for those who like somewhat violent survival science fiction films laced with black humor and don’t mind a bit of political commentary sprinkled throughout.

Until next time, keep it creepy, my friends.