‘Humane’ Review: Caitlin Cronenberg’s First Feature Is a Searing Domestic Thriller About Crimes of the Not-So-Distant Future
‘Uncropped’ Review: An Enticing Portrait of James Hamilton Makes You Wonder: Is He the Greatest New York Photographer Ever? From this degraded-future premise, you might expect to see a movie full of swirling crowds of people in chaos. But “Humane” is about one family, and it’s set almost entirely inside a mansion — a veritable castle of a home, built out of 18th-century brick, with a turret and a five-story tower.
“Humane,” which is about what happens from that point on, might be called “Long Day’s Journey into Homicidal Dystopia.” It’s an unabashedly talky movie, but I liked that about it. Cronenberg stages it with a fearless matter-of-factness, with telling nods to issues of corporate surveillance and the evils of private contracting, and with a vivid eye for the schemes and secrets hidden in the Victorian nooks and crannies of that house.