You’re watching this trailer for Stephen Karam‘s The Humans (A24, 11.24), an adaptation of his own 2016 Tony award-winning, one-act play, and waiting for the default conveyance…obviously a family ensemble piece but what’s the angle, the basic shot? And it never comes.
So you read two or three reviews, and this ensemble piece is described as some kind of metaphorical, supernatural creepshow, set in a pre-war Chinatown apartment.
The players are Beanie Feldstein, Richard Jenkins, Jayne Houdyshell, Amy Schumer, Steven Yeun and June Squibb.
Straight question, fair to ask: Does anyone find it palatable that Feldstein and Yeun are a romantic couple? If you were a guy who looked like South Korea’s answer to Brad Pitt, would you get into a serious relationship with someone of Feldstein’s league? Do birds of a feather not flock together?
The Guardian‘s Benjamin Lee: “Karam treats his family drama like it’s a horror [and] the new home becomes a haunted house of sorts, and like the very best examples within genre fiction, it brings the fears of the characters simmering to the surface, [and] there’s not one false note among his ensemble.
“There are references to a culture shift, an age gap, a difference in class and religion but Karam never positions his drama as the one We Need Right Now. It’s of a time and a place but comfortably, quietly, confidently so. There’s something both reassuring and terrifying about it all, the family’s resilient warmth and togetherness providing comfort as the existential horror of what it all amounts to chills us simultaneously.”
Come again?
Jordan Ruimy: “It’s overdirected. A coldly detached story more interested in stylized framing than the characters it depicts.”