Humans

'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.

I saw this at the Chungmuro International Film Festival in Seoul in August 2009. I must say this movie deserves not a thumbs down, but the middle finger.

The way the plot just speeds up is so ridiculous and so many questions are left unanswered. It basically degenerates into a killing fest toward the end and the ending itself is great in that the movie is finally over.

What the hell were they thinking of when they made this movie? What message about Neandrathals did the makers want to send? What a waste of my life watching this stupid film.

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.

With France undoubtedly being THE best horror-producing country at the moment (points of reference include: "Inside", "Frontier(s)", "Them" and "High Tension"), this brand new movie was high on my must-see priority list as soon as I noticed it was programmed at the annual Fantastic Film Festival in my home country. I was even more confident upon learning that the directors of "Humains" are the same guys responsible for the genuinely masterful make-up art in the aforementioned "Inside". This is the debut feature of the duo Jacques-Olivier Molon and Pierre-Olivier Thevenin, and they opted for a gritty survival horror concept with solemn anthropological undertones and a consecutively bitter ambiance. The plot is too absurd to label the film as an instant classic and it takes slightly too long before the pace properly picks up, but "Humains" is nevertheless a professionally made and highly compelling shock-adventure with truly stupendous filming locations and a fantastic, unremittingly barbaric last half hour that will cause you to leave the theater speechless and in a moderate state of shock! Professor Schneider and his two closest assistants travel to a remote Alps valley region in Switzerland for an essential anthropology expedition, as they found strong evidence about the origin of the human race that could actually alter all existing evolution theories as we know them. Shortly after their arrival, and after picking up a stranded and constantly bickering family of three, their minivan dramatically crashes down a mountain. The survivors are first subjected to a devastating showdown with nature itself before facing a rough and deadly confrontation with the greatest anthropological discovery in history. The cinematography is stunning the suspense gradually builds up towards a few very intense climaxes, but the major plot twist halfway the film is just too implausible. Also, I'm afraid we've seen a bit too many variants on survival & backwoods horror lately and the large variety of inbred freaks, hillbillies and mutant families simply aren't that menacing anymore. Not even in this case, where we're dealing with bona fide and unhinged cavemen. Still, the acting performances are stellar (Dominique Pinon is brilliant again) and the make-up effects are obviously grandiose, with a handful of stomach-churning death sequences that are jaw-dropping cruel. "Humains" is definitely recommended to experienced fans of grim survival horror and even to admirers of National Geographic Channel; as long as they fast-forward the sickening parts.

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".