Unhuman, the new collaboration from Epix and Blumhouse, is something of a mixed bag. Well-made and with a talented cast who elevate their purposefully one-note characters, Unhuman is, on the surface, fun teen-centric horror. But the film’s best ideas are let down by a script that leans too heavily into being accessible — hinting at how the movie could have become something special instead of just being good.
Unhuman sets up a classic horror story, with a group of disparate teenagers, including the sweet-natured but defiant Ever (Brianne Tju), her best friend Tamra (Ali Gallo), troubled loner Randall (Benjamin Wadsworth), the alpha-male Danny (Uriah Shelton), his preppy girlfriend Jacey (Lo Graham), fellow jock Hunt (C.J. LeBlanc), the dopey dork Steven (Drew Scheid), and the nice guy Ryan (Blake Burt). These teens find themselves on a field trip that quickly goes off the rails.
When their bus crashes and the adults are seemingly killed or turned into the undead by a mysterious, monstrous man, the teens take shelter in a nearby abandoned building. Soon enough, the simmering tensions between the survivors leave them turning against each other just as more and more of the zombies breach the building. But there’s more to the emergency than they realize, with Ever’s steadfast humanity proving to be the ultimate wrench in the villain’s plans — giving her the chance to subvert the expectations of the genre she’s found herself trapped within.
Directed by Saw veteran Marcus Dunstan with a script by Dunstan and Patrick Melton, Unhuman is a breezy and somewhat light affair. It’s quippy and funny, and it knows when to ratchet up the scares for good effect. Dunstan’s direction is equally indebted to Sam Raimi and Edgar Wright. The size of the cast makes it hard to really delve into the characters, but the performers all acquaint themselves with their archetypes — especially Tju, who handles both the down-to-earth teenage nonsense and the combative “final girl” tropes with even-handed humor and humanity. It has the DNA to be a simple and enjoyable teen horror film, one that perhaps takes too long in act one but eventually picks up the pace and barrels through to the climax.
The thing is, Unhuman isn’t just a Gen-Z riff on classic horror tropes. The real meat of the film, hidden underneath a couple of rapid reveals late in the second act, hints at a far more subversive and compelling story that plays with the way films like The Breakfast Club showcase teenage behavior. Unfortunately, in order for this side of the story to really land as well as it could, the characters would need to be better defined. If the subversion of their typical archetypes were more pronounced, the twists could have landed with better effect. Instead, the plot swerves to set up interesting ideas that it then has to blow right through to maintain its frantic pace. This also means that some moments, clearly meant to be major beats, that should be rousing or shocking are undercut or glossed over — and a host of minor setups are more or less abandoned.
Unfortunately, the film’s quick pace actually undercuts its best ideas in the third act. But that doesn’t detract from the concept behind the twist or the actual merits of the film itself. There’s a lot going on in Unhuman, and a slimmed-down cast or a more focused script might have elevated it beyond the sum of its parts. That’s not to say it is a bad movie. Unhuman has a lot to like for fans of horror and teen flicks alike, and it could be the start of some fascinating and subversive horror collaborations from Blumhouse and Epix.
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