UNHUMAN (2022)

Studio:     Blumhouse/Epix
Director:    Marcus Dunstan
Writer:     Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan
Producer:  Paige Pemberton, Paul B. Uddo
Stars:     Brianne Tju, Benjamin Wadsworth, Uriah Shelton, Ali Gallo, Peter Giles, Drew Scheid, Josh Mikel, Lo Graham, CJ LeBlanc, Blake C. Burt

Review Score:

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Summary:

After their bus crashes en route to a field trip, a group of high school students must fight for their lives against a mysterious horde of seemingly murderous zombies.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Evanston Hill High School teacher Mr. Lorenzo supervises as students board a bus for a field trip. Ever, an average girl with low self-esteem, boards with her flighty best friend Tamra. Randall and Steven, two bullied loners who harbor crushes on Tamra and Ever, also join the trip. Other students include obnoxious jock Danny, Danny’s fellow bully Hunt, Danny’s superficial girlfriend Jacey, overweight outcast Ryan, and nerdy girl Candice.

A sudden burst of blood on the windshield causes the driver, Wayne, to crash the bus in a forest. An emergency radio broadcast strangely warns of a deadly chemical attack nearby. A metalhead who appears to be a mutated zombie, later revealed to be a vengeful burnout named Chip, enters the bus and savagely mauls Mr. Lorenzo.

In the ensuing commotion, Ever, Tamra, Randall, Steven, Danny, Hunt, and Jacey escape into the woods and seek safety in an abandoned building. Ryan joins them later. Meanwhile, Chip attacks Candice and other students back on the bus.

Ever attempts to help Candice when she tries to join everyone in the building, but the other students deem rescuing her too risky, so they let Chip attack Candice again. Wayne, having seemingly mutated into a zombie like Chip, attacks everyone in the building. Classmates who were also apparently transformed capture Hunt.

Ever, Tamra, Randall, Steven, Danny, Jacey, and Ryan regroup in a room where they find mannequins dressed to resemble them. The classmates realize someone has specifically targeted all of them to be attacked.

Wayne suddenly attacks again. Randall beats him to the ground.

Danny begins transforming after being stabbed with something during the commotion. Danny angrily berates Ryan for being a reminder that they used to be in fat camp together before Danny rebuilt himself into an athlete. Wayne rises to tackle Danny through a window onto the ground outside. Initially appearing dead, Danny surprisingly contorts and runs off.

Ever leaves Tamra behind after they argue about Tamra ignoring their friendship in favor of aligning with Jacey and the jocks. Ever and Steven return to the bus to look for a phone. Steven comforts Ever as she laments being a nobody who lets everyone down. Ever and Steven nearly kiss, but Ever becomes distracted by the radio. Ever discovers that the emergency broadcast they heard earlier was actually a tape recording. Steven apologetically injects Ever from behind with a syringe. Before passing out, Ever sees Randall join Steven.

A flashback shows that four or five weeks earlier, Randall enlisted Steven for a scheme modeled after “Scared Straight” where they would stage a zombie attack to get revenge on their bullies while looking like heroes to Tamra and Ever. Wayne volunteered to participate because he hated the students. An ex-con and former student also looking for vengeance, Chip created a dangerous drug to make people behave like zombies.

Ever regains enough consciousness to hear more details about the elaborate plan. Randall berates Chip for apparently killing Mr. Lorenzo and for going too far with the drug’s effects since no one was supposed to get seriously hurt. Randall points out to a reluctant Steven that they will have to kill anyone who discovers the truth in order to keep their scheme secret.

Randall brings Steven back to the building to check on the students they injected and took captive, including Danny and Hunt. Meanwhile, Ever gathers enough strength to use a boom box to repeatedly beat Chip to the floor of the bus.

Tamra finds Randall. Randall claims zombies killed Ever so he can embrace Tamra as she grieves. After Steven secretly injects the captive students with more of Chip’s drug, Randall arms Tamra, Ryan, and Jacey with weapons as he rallies them to kill their supposedly transformed classmates.

Ever suddenly interrupts to tell everyone the truth about Randall and Steven’s plot. Tamra uses her baseball bat to club Randall. Randall inadvertently pulls down a curtain to reveal a vanity mural he previously painted that depicts him and Steven as mythic heroes saving Tamra and Ever from zombified bullies.

With the secret now fully exposed, Ever’s allies rescue Danny and lock Steven in a cage with Hunt and the other ravenous “zombies.” Everyone then fights with Randall, who gravely wounds Danny with a sword. Jacey knocks Randall to the ground. Ever then uses a makeshift Freddy Krueger glove that Chip created to stab Randall with several syringes of the drug.

Randall reforms as a “zombie.” Tamra, Jacey, Candice, and another rescued young woman team up to take Randall down. Ever finally finishes him off.

Four or five hours later, Wayne, Chip, Randall, and Steven are all taken captive. The bullies and outcasts bond over the experience. Ever and Tamra reconcile with newfound confidence about their personalities. After everyone boards the bus to leave, they discover Mr. Lorenzo is shockingly still alive.

Four or five weeks later, Ms. Operative of the PTA visits Randall and Steven in prison. Explaining that the PTA is bringing back the “Scared Straight” program, Ms. Operative invites Randall and Steven to be the masterminds.

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Review:

“Unhuman” leaves no stereotypical stone unturned in its deployment of teen tropes. Ever, an ordinary girl next door with self-esteem issues, serves as the baseline. Her flighty friend Tamra isn’t quite in the “cool kid” clique, yet she has enough awareness to be hip to trends that determine who’s hot and who’s not. Prissy blonde Jacey hangs on the arm of jerky jock Danny. Danny’s fellow bully Hunt does double duty as the lone Black character in the bunch. Ryan is the overweight outcast. Candice is the nerdy nobody. Then there are pitiable loners Randall and Steven, the former of whom is angry about being ignored by girls and beaten by boys, and the latter of whom is much mousier about it.

Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan’s script for the film, which Dunstan also directs, requires a heap of easily identifiable alter egos because its motivating message concerns how a high school food chain imprints awful psychological effects, and inspires savage revenge fantasies, on the “losers” at the bottom. But I kept expecting Melton and Dunstan, whose work within the “Saw” and “Feast” franchises has positioned them as a creative team who deals equally in self-aware cleverness and extremely wet carnage, to also do something novel with how these clichéd characterizations are portrayed. They don’t though. Although “Unhuman” has that underlying theme involving faction-based rivalries, each person really is only as thick as those few words that describe them.

“Unhuman” attempts to eke out a personality through quirky humor and quirkier editing. One of those works a bit better than the other, and it’s definitely not the humor.

Comedy is usually subjective, but “Unhuman’s” is objectively unfunny. Opening titles identify the production as “A Blumhouse Afterschool Special” (not bad) “presented by the Student Teacher Division (STD)” (very bad). STD, get it? [Insert eye roll emoji.] Yeah, that’s what we’re working with here.

The students in “Unhuman” are en route to a field trip when their bus window explodes with a burst of blood. The supervising teacher, who must be “edgy” because his phone case turns his Samsung into brass knuckles, then says of the person he presumes they hit, “Let’s just hope he was a racist, so we don’t have to feel bad.” When the kids later hide from a horde of zombies, they seek safety in a room where a blacklight reveals neon-painted walls and glow sticks on the ground. One of the bullies says, “This is some layaway rave sh*t.” O-kay. Those are technically jokes, I guess. But are they funny enough to earn laughs?

When a horror-comedy runs on the fuel of fast-paced quipping, no one should expect every zinger to be a gut-buster. Still, do we really need two separate setups where the jock and then the rich bitch worry about messing up expensive kicks in the midst of bloody murder? “Unhuman” also includes a running gag where interstitial text identifies one scene as being set “4 or 5 weeks earlier,” another at “4 or 5 hours later,” then finally one that’s “4 or 5 months later” after that. Like, what’s funny about onscreen narration being repeatedly unable to decide between two numbers? No really, what’s the joke?

Since dialogue tends to land in a lump, “Unhuman” siphons energy and style from whipping wipe transitions and a music score that alternates between buoyantly bouncy and thunderously percussive depending on whether the tone calls for quiet kookiness or frantic action. As an Epix original, “Unhuman” is another “special” delivery from Blumhouse’s TV arm. Being budgeted at that trimmed-back tier means a bare minimum amount of wide establishing shots or big scenes. Most of the movie stays confined to a bus, an abandoned building, and a small set of trees drenched in fog to hide equipment undoubtedly stashed just a few feet out of frame. The main bad guy menacing the stranded teens is literally just a burnout metalhead in a Halloween mask too, so for it’s first half, “Unhuman’s” meager meal doesn’t amount to much sustenance.

There is a twist, however, and it’s actually a fairly decent one. “Unhuman” practically morphs into a different movie, one that finally flows with entertaining interactions seasoned with several genuine surprises, when the second half flips its switch. The trouble with that though, is “Unhuman’s” previous portion wears out a great deal of goodwill by trying too hard to break out of its blandness. Even with a frenetic finale filled with some fun, the clock may have already expired on winning back bored viewers.

You might have a strong urge to turn off “Unhuman” early. I wouldn’t blame you, although I would recommend giving it a bit longer, at least up until the key reveal, to see if the twist reignites your interest. Maybe it’ll salvage the disappointment of having made a mediocre choice for an evening’s entertainment. Or it might merely make you wish that the flat first 55 minutes featured as much flair as the final 35.

NOTE: There is a mid-credits scene.

Review Score: 50

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