AT People it all starts with a family reunion like any other. The one that all members attend because they have no other choice, and which they would no doubt prefer to avoid. But in the end, they sit down to a table – or, in the worst case, confront each other – in the middle of a rarefied atmosphere.
For the first half hour, Stephen Karam’s film plays with the idea of forced coexistence of virtual strangers united by blood. The premise, which of course is part a type of story that explores human relationships.
But the director, who directed the 2016 Tony Award-winning adaptation of his play, has a more difficult question to ask. Asking questions about whether all the anger, frustration, fear, and perceived violence it contains can become a threat.
A family like any other that gets into a perverted situation
The Blake family seems to fit all the stereotypes of narratives based on conflicting emotions. Bridget (Bini Feldstein) and her boyfriend Richard (Stephen Yeun) are in a relationship dying. So on the verge of bursting that during the first episodes, the pent-up pain is palpable and uncomfortable.
Perhaps the fact is that, like many other New Yorkers, they experienced almost cinematic September 11, 2001. Regardless of the cause, both seem to be caught up in a vague sense of heaviness.
It is in the half-empty apartment they share that her family reluctantly attends Thanksgiving dinner. His mother Deirdre (Jane Hoodishell), father Eric (Richard Jenkins), sister Aimee (Amy Schumer), and grandmother Momo (June Squibb) are inevitable guests. So hateful that the evening quickly turns into an exchange of veiled insults and toxic memories. The premise makes it clear that the stress in the environment will cause an explosion. What he never reveals until his magnificent final cut is that something much darker is going on than one might think.
that’s when People he risks becoming creepy by not revealing the true nature of his story. Is it horror drama? A mixture between two things? There are no clear answers in a story that becomes suffocating at times.
Monsters with a human face
It is amazing that each of the characters masters his own space, in which the unpleasant manifests itself until it becomes unbearable. Deirdre is a controlling and cruel mother. Eric hides in an internal tension that is about to spill over into something terrible. Amy, who gives Amy Schumer the opportunity to showcase a new record, endures rejection from the family for her leadership. Little by little, this dysfunctional family picture is falling apart, revealing the poorly healed scars of something more venomous.
But Karam, playing with the concept of hatred as a manifestation of a greater evil, takes the confrontation to unusual and increasingly dark places. Soon, Richard, whose Korean American heritage is becoming important, confronts Brigitte’s family. All representatives of the extreme right faith with Catholic roots.
In fact, fear (at least as Karam understands it) is associated with the power of rejection and prejudice. The camera moves back and forth between conversations, and it soon becomes clear that there is something unnatural about it. this suffocating capsule of passive-aggressive aggression.
It’s not just the secrets that seem to be revealed, or the increasingly overwhelming manifestation of the discordant element on the periphery. People makes it clear that evil – whatever it may be – is embodied in the nature of his characters.
How this manifests itself is an ominous question that is asked from all sides, and when it is answered, it is terrifying. For the plot, what happens in front of the cameras is only a part of what is hidden outside the story. Which makes the feeling of a mystery within a mystery all the more overwhelming.
What is hidden under the ordinary scene in People
Is the conflict the script is about a complex mystery? A feature film is not too generous with explanations, and this is its main advantage. Little by little, this shows that what is hidden between discussions, antipathy and outright hostility is a darker element than one might think.
People this may have been obvious, or at any rate not required patience on the part of the viewer to decipher its symbols. But the director risks creating a complex map, a particular inexplicable tension that effectively supports his story.
The film manages to get to the horror – to the absolute and harrowing – through the development of seemingly unrelated situations. One character attacks another in a whisper. Another locks himself in one of the bathrooms, waiting for news of an undisclosed fact. By the time the third tranche is received, it becomes clear that the script managed to skillfully use its supposedly independent storylines. Connect them in an unknown scenario to tell an ominous shadow, immersed in everyday events.
Dark and insatiable family, the worst enemy
One of the highest points in HumanThis is how he details the fear without showing its cause. There is no curse, no monster, no supernatural horror, at least none recognizable at first sight. But an anomaly in the middle of the map of conversations, discussions in an undertone and especially, in the feeling that everything is happening in an unnatural layer.
Each of the characters has secrets to keep. Worse, are manifestations of something perverted, beyond the scope of simple mutual antipathy. From abusive parents to a lesbian daughter who is the center of hidden but painful attacks. A family dinner turns into a grotesque setting.
The director turns Brigid and Richard’s apartment into something more than just a space. Light penetrates with difficulty, damp spots on the walls. The unmistakable feeling that it is more than it seems. Corridors twisting into awkward places, locked doors and windows too small. Everything contributes to giving the house claustrophobic proportions.
Is this an optical illusion? About the characters’ attempt to escape their reality? The corners leak and exude a terrible moisture, the tiles in the bathroom crack with thick veins. Every little thing gets more and more disgusting as the discussions become more poignant and violent. Does what happens at family dinner affect the physical reality at home?
Lengthening shadows, a perverse feeling that everything that happens is destined to happen and explode in inexplicable directions. Director of photography Lol Crowley creates a scenario of unbearable tension, which in a certain way refers to the series. servant M. Night Shyamalan. Just like Apple TV+ production, People think about how space can be the center of fear.
Answers, horrors, doors are locked People
In this twisted realm, the Blake family is almost ghostly. The fact that the script is largely based on Richard’s point of view makes it up to the viewer to decide what happens. Terror is real but not relevant. Also not straight. It is based on inner shadows that turn ordinary situations into something repulsive and, in the end, voracious.
To Karam, monsters do not belong to other planes, dimensions, or planets. These are the ones who know the secrets that can harm, turn words into weapons and destroy. That the director used this premise to turn what could have been a drama into a psychological horror plot is quite a feat. Also his eloquent view of human nature. Perhaps the most cruel, ruthless and bloody creature of all.
