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Home / Essays / The Humans Review: More than just filmed theatre

Orla Smith / December 2, 2021

The Humans Review: More than just filmed theatre

Stephen Karam adapts his own play with The Humans, a family drama that echoes the joys of theatre while still making ample use of the tools of cinema.

Boiling Point is now on VOD in Canada and the US.

A still from The Humans, in which an aging heterosexual couple, played by Richard Jenkins and Jane Houdyshell, sits at a dinner table, the woman looking pointedly at her husband while her looks down at the food in front of him. The text on the image reads, 'Review'.
The Humans Review: More than just filmed theatre.

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Stephen Karam’s The Humans (adapted from Karam’s own play) is a treat for anyone who loves to watch actors act and bounce off of each other, developing rich and recognisable characters and relationships over the course of a film. Those actors are Richard Jenkins, Jane Houdyshell, Beanie Feldstein, Amy Schumer, June Squibb, and Steven Yuen (my MVP for the comedic relief he brings to an already darkly funny film). Feldstein and Yuen play a couple who have invited her family to their new NYC apartment for Thanksgiving dinner. As with many family get-togethers, casual conversation slowly devolves into a night that dredges up secrets and traumas.

A wide shot from The Humans, in which we see a family gathered in a dining room, seen through a hallway archway.

Karam films a one-location Thanksgiving gathering in a way that echoes the joys of theatre — wide shots allow you to notice actors’s body language, and to watch an actor react even when they’re not the centre of the scene. But this is much more than filmed theatre; Karam knows the power of a sparingly used closeup or mid shot. The film even dips into existential horror territory at the end, turning a realistic family drama into the stuff of nightmares with spine-chilling use of darkness, shadow, and the sounds of things going bump in the night. I’m not totally sure what to make of the film, or if it all comes together thematically, but I was always gripped by the characters, who all feel so lived-in and reminiscent of real people I know.

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Filed Under: Essays, Film Reviews Tagged With: Stage vs. Screen

About Orla Smith

Orla Smith is the Executive Editor of Seventh Row, a regular contributor at The Film Stage, and a freelance writer with bylines at JumpCut Online, Cinema Year Zero, and Girls on Tops. In her free time she makes movies.

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