Unhuman (2022)

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Posted By: brian@brianschell.com June 16, 2022

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

The zombie thriller Unhuman is now available On Digital and On Demand. When a high school field trip goes bloody awry, the students’ trust in each other is tested to the limit in a brutal, horrifying fight for survival. Buy or rent Unhuman and watch it today. Unrated. From Paramount Pictures.

Kevin thought this movie was so delightful that Kevin barely complained about people in their 20s playing teenagers. It quickly gets going into the zombie genre with a bus load of people trapped and attacked. It’s not what we expected from it. A real fun house of a movie that’s really well done and entertaining. Just a little too long going at the very end, but it’s forgivable.

Synopsis

Ever and her mother have an annoyingly typical mother-daughter talk before Ever leaves on her field trip. Her friend Tamra nags at her about wearing *too much clothing. They run into Randall on his bike with their car, but he’s OK. The school bullies drive by and bomb Randall with a slushie. We see that Ever doesn’t have a cell phone when the teacher confiscates everyone’s phone. There’s not a actor on the bus under 22, but whatever… Mr. Lorenzo gives a pep talk before the bus leaves for the field trip, and he’s… weird. Credits roll. As the credits roll, we’re reminded how monstrous high-school really was.

The bus crashes in the woods rather dramatically. Suddenly, they get a radio broadcast announcing that the United States is under siege by a chemical attack, but the P.E. Teacher makes them shut that off.

A man knocks on the school bus’s door and then eats Lorenzo. Most of the students make it off the back of the bus out into the foggy woods. Danny the jock thinks they’re all crazy with their zombie fantasies. They barricade themselves inside an abandoned building. They hear Candace screaming outside, but the guy the bus ran over is right outside their windows, still creeping around. Ever yells to Candace, but Wayne the bus driver attacks her instead— he’s a zombie now.

The zombies break in, and everyone is on the run again. There’s more fighting and running, and soon, the number of students has fallen dramatically. They then find a room full of mannequins dressed just like them. “They chose us!” Danny yells. Randall beats the bus driver to a bloody pulp, which makes Tamra look at him romantically. Danny got cut in the chaos, and everyone wonders if he’s infected.

Randall and Ever argue about who’s in charge. Ever and Steven make a trip outside to the school bus to try and retrieve their phones. They find the bag of phones, but they’re all broken. Ever has a whiny spell and Steven’s not good at cheering her up. They turn on the radio and find that the government warning they heard later was a tape. Who did that? Steven did, as he and Randall inject Ever with something to make her sleep.

We flash back 4 or 5 weeks ago. Randall talks Steven into a sort of “Scared Straight” program for the school assholes. They talk Chip, a local drug dealer, into playing the original zombie who killed Mr. Lorenzo, “I’m fuckin’ METHOD, dude!” The bus driver overhears this, and he’s in as well. Chip comes up with some kind of zombie juice that makes the victim violent and suggestible.

Back on the bus, Chip got carried away; no one was supposed to die. Steven and Randall yell at Chip on the bus. Chip reveals that this was his chance to get revenge for his own high school experience. Randall’s been keeping the “dead” students in cages; they aren’t really dead.

Ever fights with Chip while Randall re-injects all the kids in the cages, making them act like zombies again. Tamra finds Randall and he consoles her. Ever beats Chip and starts to wake up from the drug.

Randall arms the other “rescued” kids and talks them into killing the ones in the cages. Ever runs in and yells for the others to stop; she explains everything. Tamra whacks Randall, but he grabs the last syringe of the zombie chemical. As he reaches to inject Ever, he’s pulled into the cage with the zombies, who tear him apart.

Randall attacks Ever with a sword, but Danny gets stabbed instead. Jacey, who hasn’t done anything through the entire film, hits Randall with a crowbar. Of course, he gets up one more time, and Ever really lets him have it.

Then they all explain what lessons they learned in their adventure, which was maybe one ending too many.

Commentary

How many abandoned crack houses have working electricity and black light fixtures?

It was all going well until Ever found out what was really going on, then it all sort of dragged to a halt as everyone got all angsty. The editing in the climax made the whole thing hard to follow.

I get the motivations behind what Randall and Steven did, but I’m not sure what their final plan was going to be. They had to come out of the woods at some point, and even a light investigation by the police would turn up a lot of inconvenient information about their plan.

It all looked good, the editing, except for one scene, was well done, and the acting was decent. The plot is one where you don’t want to think too hard about the hows and whys, but it was fast-paced and overall, I liked it.