The Humans
A24 | Release Date: November 24, 2021 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
78
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 38 Critic Reviews
Positive:
32
Mixed:
5
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The TelegraphTim RobeyJan 1, 2022
It gives you a family hanging on by a thread, and makes the careful tending of that thread feel so desperate it’s more than a little terrifying. Read full review
100
The Irish TimesTara BradyDec 30, 2021
The ensemble remains electrifying against the damp. Read full review
100
Original-CinKaren GordonNov 29, 2021
Subtlety is the strength of The Humans. It is an intelligent even-handed drama where the family’s issues aren’t played to the point where they’re gruelling and destructive. Rather, they show us something more ordinary and therefore more truthful. Read full review
100
Rolling StoneDavid FearNov 29, 2021
Every one of the performances is, to say the least, an example of what talented actors can bring to a piece of character-driven tragedy; there’s not a single weak link in this chain, while the collective chemistry suggests an instant history of affection, conflict, and shared cringing. Read full review
100
The New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisNov 24, 2021
The confessions and tensions are commonplace, but The Humans is never less than high on the terrible power of the mundane. Read full review
100
The GuardianBenjamin LeeSep 18, 2021
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. Read full review
100
The Hollywood ReporterFrank ScheckSep 18, 2021
The film is a remarkably insightful and powerful portrait of the human condition. Read full review
91
ConsequenceMary SirokyOct 7, 2021
The Humans is magic. Read full review
90
The AtlanticShirley LiDec 7, 2021
The spookiness of The Humans conveys a larger point about the intimacy of family life. The Blakes’ shaky dynamic—their passive-aggressive asides and nonchalant appraisals—could be considered normal, but by using filmmaking techniques usually reserved for ghost stories, Karam challenges that normalcy. Read full review
90
VarietyPeter DebrugeSep 18, 2021
I’ll admit that Karam’s camera strays down one too many empty hallways for my taste, but I love the patience with which he lets things unfold, the respect he shows this family, and the way these characters don’t feel like characters at all, but real people — fellow humans. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleTrace SauveurNov 24, 2021
Karam manages an incredible feat of genre-bending, as neither the comedy nor horror impairs the other. Each is built so naturally within the drama: The laughs are the result of simply having well-realized characters and the scares an existential manifestation of their contentions. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzNov 24, 2021
At times the movie feels like Hereditary without the supernatural elements and gore. It's a psychological horror movie about the ordinary miseries and compromises of family. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeDon AucoinNov 24, 2021
Karam uses lingering closeups, off-kilter camera angles, and half-heard conversations from other rooms to heighten the film’s aura of free-floating dread. Read full review
88
Vanity FairRichard LawsonSep 18, 2021
Karam makes an auspicious directorial debut, one that captures all the tense, rattling mood of his stage horror while giving it a new, decidedly cinematic shape. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Johanna SchnellerSep 15, 2021
The writer’s adage that the specific is universal comes fully alive in this family drama, written and directed by Stephen Karam, based on his Tony-winning play. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Nov 30, 2021
The Humans holds a smudged mirror up to any unsuspecting viewers who might enter its cramped Chinatown abode in search of distraction from the unresolved resentments of their own clan. It looms large in the small canon of Thanksgiving cinema, a quintessential stomachache of a movie. Read full review
83
IndieWireDavid EhrlichSep 18, 2021
The result is a stilted and unnerving film that chips away at the petrified staginess of its origins with every sudden noise, as if Karam were sledge-hammering little cracks into the hull of his film’s WASPy modern family. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawJan 11, 2022
Very real issues are suffused with an oppressive, unearthly, compelling unreality. Read full review
80
EmpireAlex GodfreyDec 30, 2021
There’s palpable dread throughout this stagey but nevertheless evocative whirlwind of dysfunction. It’s a gripping, appropriately stifling experience, and the feelings — the fear, the disappointment, the unhappiness — hit home. Read full review
80
Little White LiesSaffron MaeveDec 21, 2021
The Humans won’t work for many – it’s a slow burn with a mean ending. Some may insist that the story lacks cogency offstage, but it’s those frenetic, intimate and often senseless moments that justify its title. Read full review
80
Screen RantMae AbdulbakiDec 3, 2021
Thanks to the writing, directing, and cast, The Humans makes for a disconcerting, haunting, and moving watch. It’s a Thanksgiving family drama that amplifies its characters’ relationships within an eerie, charged space to great effect. Read full review
80
IGNTara Bennett Dec 1, 2021
The Humans is a thoughtful and brilliantly acted meditation on family and humanity. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangNov 24, 2021
Is The Humans a haunted-house movie? Maybe; Karam is not above unleashing a good jump scare or two. But for all the creeping dread he summons here through sheer formal concentration, the nature of the horror he’s addressing turns out to be much harder to pin down. Read full review
80
SlashfilmChris EvangelistaSep 18, 2021
The cast is dynamite across the board. The way they converse with each other feels wholly natural, as if they've been talking for years. Read full review
75
The Associated PressJocelyn NoveckNov 24, 2021
Karam is adapting his own Tony-winning work here, a play inspired by the 2007-2008 financial crisis. In doing so he achieves something quite rare: He makes an intimate and devastating family drama even more intimate and devastating. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsNov 24, 2021
This is not a raucous family takedown; nor is Karam’s tale a matter of artificial family conflicts, tidily resolved. The Humans gets a lot done in a short amount of time, in a single, two-level setting, plus a few fraught intimations of what’s down the hall or around the corner. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperNov 23, 2021
As you’d expect from this cast, the performances are uniformly excellent, with the standout being Jayne Houdyshell, the only holdover from the Broadway production, who reprises her Tony-winning role and is mesmerizing as an ordinary woman with an extraordinary capacity to get through the night, the week, the year, the life, she’s been given. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineKeith WatsonNov 22, 2021
Throughout The Humans, Stephen Karam orchestrates the highs and lows of a family reunion with Chekhovian subtlety. Read full review
75
Washington PostAnn HornadayNov 22, 2021
Like The Father last year, The Humans makes the set a character in itself: Karam has concocted a diabolically creaky duplex whose wonky corners and jury-rigged improvements take on an increasingly sinister patina as the meal progresses. Read full review
73
Paste MagazineJesse HassengerNov 23, 2021
On film, The Humans is more Thanksgiving-appropriate than ever. No preludes, no gifts, no tinsel. Just you and your family—or, worse, you and yourself. Read full review
70
Screen DailyTim GriersonSep 18, 2021
The Humans is a marvel of slight shifts in tone and rhythm, guided by a uniformly strong cast of actors who deliver naturalistic performances which show the cracks in their characters’ pleasant veneer. Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreDec 1, 2021
The only “issues” that feel lived-in are the ones literally everybody faces — health, aging parents and grandparents — mortality. It’s the players most wrapped up in those who stand out. The rest is just colorful, sometimes flippant, background noise. Read full review
60
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeJan 2, 2022
The Humans struggles to escape its theatrical origins. Read full review
60
TheWrapRobert AbeleSep 18, 2021
In the aggregate, Karam’s directing is so meticulously composed about conveying the density of what’s unsaid, and the mood around the people instead of the people creating the mood, that “The Humans” can feel a bit suffocating. Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattNov 24, 2021
The cast's chemistry never quite gels beyond their staged circumstances, and too much of the dialogue replicates actual life without finding a deeper resonance: the rambling anecdotes, latent passive aggressions, and aimless small talk of ordinary people just living their lives. Read full review
50
The PlaylistRobert DanielsSep 18, 2021
As a film, The Humans provides serrated frights and big challenges for its actors, but ultimately, it is too cold and never believable enough to immerse one in its purported dread. Read full review
50
The Film StageC.J. PrinceSep 18, 2021
The Humans spends its time inside its own head when it should have been putting more effort getting into ours. Read full review
0
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleNov 23, 2021
Not counting no-budget movies with casts of nonprofessionals, The Humans is one of the worst-directed films in recent memory. It plays like a wicked practical joke or a deliberate act of sabotage. Read full review
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