Humans

I watched this movie because I'm learning French, and because I am pathetically in love with Sara Forestier after watching 'Le Nom de Gens'.

Unfortunately, this film is bobbins. Total bobbins. It's one of those movies that makes you wonder, at what point did ANYONE think this was a good idea?

If you wish to experience how bad this movie is, simply imagine the worst episode of the X Files possible. Then have someone kick you in the balls.

Despite this movie's suckiness, I'm still in love with Sara Forestier. And I still think that Dominique Pinon has a brilliant face. I want to make a movie in which Dominique Pinon and Toby Jones play gay lovers.

'Humains' is not a pure horror movie, hence the horror movie audience is bashing it for not having enough mangled corpses. In the first half of its running time, 'Humains' is an adventure flick about people lost in the wilderness, reminds me of John Boorman's 'Deliverance', with the additional spice that they are totally unprepared to walk for miles. The 'dumb' characters are actually quite realistic, because I wouldn't expect big city folks, picked by random and put in the middle of nowhere, to behave much wiser. Compared to the silly high school kids you often find in horror movies, a good choice of actors. In the second half, it does get more violent, but interestingly, that's hardly caused by the ugly guys, and without giving anything away: I loved the ending, it's almost poetic.

The movie does not try hard to be scientific. This is the second reason why many people are bashing it. The professor didn't tell the young assistants a lot before they start exploring, and it's more like "imagine what would happen if..." than providing a plausible theory for the existence of big noses in Switzerland. There's one thing I like about monster movies of the 1950s or 60s: nobody expected you to be scientific, just put the monster on the screen and get on with it. Today it's definitely harder to convince the audience.

All in all, I think 'Humains' is treated somewhat too harsh here. It has a couple of good points and overall atmosphere, it has a few weak points, too - but if you do not expect a horror movie like 'The Descent', but rather a fantasy adventure trip in the mountains sort of thing, it is worth checking out. Actually, I think it would have sold better if they avoided the little bit of gory violence, as there isn't much, anyway, and thus made it to a censorship rating allowing a younger audience to watch it.

HUMAINS seems to be gathering a lot of bad reviews here on the IMDb, but I have to confess and say it wasn't all that bad. Certainly it's no classic and indeed it feels slightly below average for the genre, but it's a lot more entertaining than your usual braindead American slasher or the like.

The French setting immediately gives it a level of quality that's atypical for the genre. The format of the main characters going on a hike to the Alps to search for the missing link is an interesting one, and although the set-up turns out to be more effective than the denouement, at least HUMAINS has plenty of action and incident to keep the viewer watching.

On the bad side: it's rather cheesy and the prosthetic make-up effects look silly and like something you'd expect to see from the 1960s rather than now. On the plus side, HUMAINS has something of the foreboding of a film like THE DESCENT, with which it shares more than a few similarities, and the character actor Dominique Pinon is always a pleasure to see up on screen. You could do worse, in other words...

A team of researches travel to the Swiss Alps to investigate a scientific discovery on human evolution. However the trip soon turns into a deadly fight for survival when the team crash into a gully and find themselves falling prey to someone, something or somekind!

Now I am not prepared to bash this film as much as a lot of people out there will. Yes, as far as production is concerned, this film is lacking. Some tidying up of loose editing and some brushing up on the acting, would have made the film a lot better, but considering the budget, I was prepared to overlook that. Considering that some of the crew worked on the brilliant "Inside" I expected this one to be a nasty little piece. However it was extremely tame in comparison. Having said that, looking past the obvious faults, I actually thought it had some purpose, as there were one or two scenes with genuine suspense and the ending, which I wont give away, was quite a pleasant surprise as well. Once again, Phillipe Nahon was not utilised to full capacity in this one and I thought it was a waste of talent, however he lit up the screen, like he always does, for the run time that he appeared in. Some of the costume designs for the cavemen, were quite good and some were quite shoddy. It is in no way a great film, but you could do a lot worse. Go into it with limited expectation and you never know ... you could find yourself enjoying it.

I strongly dislike when people try to make a statement by rating any movie they didn't like a 1 and calling it "the worse movie of all time". I must still admit that I couldn't find any reason not to rate the movie "Humains" at the lowest end of the scale. Directors Jacques-Olivier Molon and Pierre-Olivier Thevenin show a lack of experience and, much more alarming, any sense of vision, storytelling or purpose in what is an extremely boring movie.

I'll scratch the barrel and find a few positives first:

-Some of the wilderness locations, while awfully shot, are beautiful. -The basic premise of surviving prehistoric beings was interesting and holds potential.

Everything else is pretty much crap. The bunch of actors on display here play two- dimensional characters unconvincingly. The script is goddamn awful and will make anyone cringe. Nothing is lifelike (very disappointing since this is usually the strong suit of French cinema). The editing is pure crap and the amateurish film score is certainly the worse I have heard in recent years.

It seems the directors wanted to shoot a classic horror story of a group of stranded survivors facing an intelligent enemy. We've seen mutants, monsters, aliens, thugs.... this time we get a new variation with some sort of weird-looking cavemen that look more like caricatures in a children movie than anything else.

If you look at the credits of both directors, you'll see they are special effects make-up specialists. One can easily guess it was a dream for them to direct a movie that would also require their skills. I can't say I find anything there very impressive but it is better than the digital effects, which are laughable.

What really amazes me is that four (FOUR!) writers are credited for writing this snooze-fest. With two directors and four more writers, you would think there would be enough creative power to come up with something better in a single evening of brainstorming. You would also think such a group would peer-review each other, challenge themselves to something less ridiculous.

I doubt any producer will finance these two directors anytime soon after seeing the garbage that is "Humains".