"Unhuman" a knowing, energetic but witless horror-comedy-afterschool special

 Unhuman (2022)

Well, not every horror movie off the Blumhouse conveyor belt can be an outright winner. The low-budget creative model should force a filmmaker to amp up their imagination (and spare no expense on Karo syrup). Unfortunately, "Unhuman" is more of an inoffensively lame, seemingly thrown-together genre throwaway. It does eventually subvert our expectations of how a John Hughesian zombie-outbreak splatstick flick would play out, but despite a jokey attitude, attempts at snark more commonly beget groans. It’s dispiriting because “Unhuman” actually offers some novelty once it changes course.

The slyest joke might come even before a single frame of the film itself. "A Blumhouse Afterschool Special" comes up as a title card, followed by "presented by the Student Teacher Division (STD)." It's a cheeky sight gag, priming one for a bonkers, horror-tinged survival story with a lesson to learn. Then we meet high school outcast Ever (Brianne Tju), embarking on a class field trip into nature. She's feeling a certain way since her punkish but popular bestie Tamra (Ali Gallo) has started hanging out more with the cool kids, including a jock (Uriah Shelton) and mean girl (Lo Graham) who are also along for the bus ride. After the driver hits something full of blood and crashes off the road, a sound-system message alerts them that they’re under siege by a chemical attack. A flesh-eating savage then hops aboard the bus and attacks their out-of-touch faculty chaperone (Peter Giles), sending Ever and her classmates out the emergency door and into the wilderness. There’s no time to figure out what will infect them, but in order to survive, friendships will be tested and alliances will have to be made.

If there’s anything to expect from writer-director Marcus Dunstan (who directed the nasty "The Collector" and the superior, more inspired "The Collection") and co-writer Patrick Melton ("Piranha 3DD"), it is a quick, sophomoric sense of humor amidst the carnage. "Unhuman" does not lack energy or color, either, but not everything sticks. Dunstan’s zippy direction keeps the momentum going, despite a lot of frenetic, repetitive action within the same graffitied construction dump and too much sloppy slow-motion of these "World War Z" rejects pouncing toward their prey. An hour in, Dunstan and Melton do manage a pretty clever reveal. Generally, though, the script is witless, too often sounding like an older generation trying really hard to make the teen-speak sound hip and funny. The zingers rarely zing, but that shift of the gears tries negating everything that came before, almost excusing why it all looks generic and schlocky. Having to rely on coincidences and character actions to get there, the execution isn't airtight, but it's an admirably fresh idea anyhow. 

The cast is game, even if their characters feel barely written and their histories with each other don't all register the impact they demand. One could probably argue that they're all meant to be high school archetypes (you'll see why), but they're still a functional, mostly disposable bunch. Besides Ever, Tamra, and maybe nice guy Steven (Drew Scheid, 2018’s “Halloween” and “Fear Street: 1978”), none of these annoying cardboard cutouts are really worth caring about. Despite coming off overly skittish even before the bus crash, Brianne Tju (who has co-starred in both MTV’s “Scream” series and Amazon’s “I Know What You Did Last Summer” series) gives it her all as Ever and supplies rooting interest with her mere presence. You want Ever to come out on top, and there's even a dorky infectiousness to her neon-colored, comic-book-stylized beatdown at the climax (and a nod to Freddy Krueger's glove) that could exist in "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World." 

“Unhuman” has enough flashes of inspiration to want to root for it, but it's never the kicky, biting high-school satire with coked-up "Detention" energy it might have aspired to be. By the end, there's a voice-over narration that spells out its anti-bullying messaging; it might be glibly poking fun at Afterschool Specials, or it might mean it for real. As is, the moralistic message just reads as clunky and phony, not earned. As a self-knowing romp, "Unhuman" wants to be cuter than it deserves, being so pleased with itself that it even sets up an unwarranted sequel midway through the end credits. Instead, where's our sequel to a more fun and likably juvenile teen-centered horror-comedy, like 2015's "Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse"?

Grade: C 

Blumhouse Television and EPIX are releasing “Unhuman” (91 min.) on digital on June 3, 2022.