Washington [US], April 27 : Canadian filmmaker Caitlin Cronenberg refused to sit in the director's chair for a very long time. As a tremendously accomplished photographer who has photographed everyone and everything, including the much-publicised cover art for Drake's fourth studio album, Views, she had no desire to follow in the footsteps of her father, David Cronenberg, and elder brother, Brandon Cronenberg, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
But everything began to change when Schitt's 'Creek' star Annie Murphy contacted Caitlin about a low-pressure directing project that would eventually fuel her hunger for her feature directorial debut, Humane.
"It was very much thrust upon me by my friend Annie Murphy from Schitt's Creek. She was doing a web series [The Plateaus] and needed a fake music video ... and throughout that process, I realised that directing felt very natural to me," said Cronenberg. "And when I did a short film called The Endings [2018], I got an agent's attention in L.A. even though I wasn't seeking out an agent or representation in any way. So it happened quite naturally. I trusted the process, and here we are."
'Humane' is a family-oriented thriller set in the near future, where a global ecological calamity has driven world leaders to lower each country's population by 20%. The York family, led by patriarch and recently retired newsman Charles York (Peter Gallagher), gathers for a family dinner at their castle-like home, where Charles informs his four children that he and his current wife, Dawn (Uni Park), have enrolled in the Department of Citizen Strategy's (D.O.C.S) euthanasia programme. As a result of this surprising revelation, the adult children argue over Charles' estate and if it is simply another tactic to reinforce his already threatening legacy.
While the four York children have always wrestled with their father's legacy, Cronenberg insists that this story wasn't a way to explore her own feelings regarding her father's sizable legacy as a horror filmmaker.
"The Charles York character is very, very different from my own experience with my father," Cronenberg says. "My upbringing was very different from that, and there are no similarities really between my dad and the Charles York character."
At one point, the Cronenberg patriarch actually had a small cameo in the film, but it ended up on the cutting room floor. So Caitlin opted to instead give him a voice cameo, as D.O.C.S. produces weekly propaganda commercials in order to highlight the "Enlisters of the Week."
"The 'Enlisters of the Week' commercials were actually a consolation prize for [David Cronenberg]. He was in the film as a cameo, but he got cut out. So we brought him in to do the voiceovers on the commercials so he wouldn't be sad," Caitlin jokes. "But I also thought that he had the right tone of voice. I wanted someone who you would believe is calm and sweet to put you at ease, which he did very well."
When Caitlin sat down to view her assembly cut after 20 days of primary filming, she felt what many filmmakers do, regardless of their expertise.
"I have never been so upset as the first time I watched an assembly of [Humane]. I thought, 'Oh no, this is garbage. I've made garbage and this is a terrible film,'" Cronenberg recalls.
However, she then called her brother, Brandon, who, like Caitlin, has made his own name for himself as the filmmaker behind genre gems such as Antiviral (2012), Possessor (2022) and Infinity Pool (2023).
"I called my brother and I said, 'My film is garbage.' And he said, 'Oh no! You never hate a film as much as the first time you see an assembly, but then it gets better,'" Caitlin recalled. "And that is true. So much changed for the better," according to The Hollywood Reporter.