The Humans, on MUBI, dissects a middle-class family unit in a state of decay

A middle-class family comes together for Thanksgiving dinner at a lower Manhattan duplex. Each comes bearing gifts and excess baggage. Personal anxieties trigger, brewing resentments bubble over, traumas resurface, long-held secrets come to light, and the banter turns bitter. What each of them needs is a little bit of faith, reassurance, and encouragement. But all that is available is plenty of judgment, cutting remarks and unsolicited advice. A not-too-atypical family gathering, you could say.

The Humans continues a long cinematic tradition of the family gathering gone wrong. Stephen Karam adapts his own one-act play in a directorial debut that carries all the eager-to-impress markers of one. A chamber piece is imagined in the language of a haunted-house movie: light bulbs burn out one by one; damp stains on the walls start to leak; doors creak open; trash compactors rattles; laundry machines hum; and loud thuds of the upstairs neighbour interrupt the celebrations. Of course, it’s an urban cacophony one gets used to while living in a big city, especially New York.

The Thanksgiving dinner is hosted by Brigid Blake ( Beanie Feldstein ) and her boyfriend Richard ( Steven Yeun ) at their new apartment in Manhattan’s Chinatown. The guests: Brigid’s parents, Erik ( Richard Jenkins ) and Deirdre ( Jayne Houdyshell ) who are coming down from Scranton, Pennsylvania with grandma Momo (June Squibb); and Brigid’s older sister Aimee (Amy Schumer), who works as a lawyer in Philadelphia. Personal guilt, generational tensions, and middle-class fears and frustrations are accentuated by the claustrophobia that sets in inside a crumbling home. Each of them is facing a crisis. Each of them is plagued by a fear of loss: of dreams, of love, of privilege, of health, and of themselves.

Brigid is a twenty-something aspiring composer drowning in student debt and nursing resentments towards her parents for not aiding her financially. Richard is in his 30s and still working towards a master’s degree in social work, at least until a trust fund kicks in when he reaches 40. Aimee is coming off a break-up with her girlfriend, she is about to lose her job, and worse, she is losing her health too, suffering from a gastrointestinal disorder. Erik and Deirdre have held on to the same underpaid jobs for decades for the sake of pension and stability for their daughters. Deirdre masks the arthritic pain in her aged knees and clings on to her faith. Erik is anxious the whole evening as he prepares to reveal a long-held secret that could tear the family apart. Then, there is Momo, Erik’s dementia-ridden, wheelchair-bound mother who becomes one with the furniture, reduced to a haunting reminder of the life they could lose. That Brigid will shoulder the heavy burden of tuition costs for the foreseeable future, and Erik and Deirdre can’t afford to hire someone to care for Momo, tells you everything you need to know about every American institution employed in the service of capitalism.

Don’t ask how a debt-ridden musician and an aspiring social worker can afford a duplex in this climate. Scenes framed against the spiral staircase, mirrored doors, blurry windows, and darkened corridors play up the sense of disquiet, further amplified by the strings of Nico Muhly’s score. The corridors are so narrow Momo’s wheelchair barely fits through, as we see in a scene where Erik and Deirdre must close all the doors to push her forward. The opening credits sequence sets the tone with a camera positioned in the narrow confines amidst New York’s high-rise buildings and looking towards the sky as if for respite from the suffocation.

Economic anxieties aside, the trauma of taking Aimee to the World Trade Centre for a job interview the morning of 9/11 feeds into Erik’s concerns over Brigid moving into an old apartment a few blocks from the tragedy. Reignited family tensions cause friction between the couple as well. When Richard asks Brigid to “be nice to your mother,” the two reconvene in the kitchen for an argument. Moments of warmth are rare: At one point, each of them passes around a “peppermint pig” to smash before expressing what they are thankful for as is the Blake family tradition.

Across the 100-odd minutes of this haunting drama, the camera seldom stands still, following the dysfunctional family around like a ghost in itself, and directing our attention to the rotten foundation on which they have converged. The framing feels too mannered, the camerawork disruptive, and often the emotions themselves stage-managed. Karam’s stylistic flourishes may succeed in evoking a tense mood for some viewers, and may strike others as overwrought. But there is no denying they tend to call attention to themselves. The result not only prevents the film from tapping a deeper resonance but also dulls its sharper inquiries into the anxieties of the middle-class family unit.

The Humans is streaming on MUBI

Prahlad Srihari is a film and music writer based in Bengaluru.

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