Mark Reviews Movies: HUMAN FACTORS

Human Factors, Dark Star Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 5, 2022

Despite its premise, Human Factors isn't a thriller. The plot of writer/director Ronny Trocker's movie begins with a home invasion, witnessed by only one member of a family of four. The intrusion is finished almost as quickly as it's realized, and after that, the central question here is how these characters will react to the event.

There's an intriguing gimmick to the structure of Trocker's screenplay, which sees the timeline before, during, and after the invasion from different perspectives. Some of the shifts in viewpoint provide clues as to what did happen or could have happened in that moment, but for the most part, the movie is primarily interested in how the intrusion fits into the problems that already exist within the family.

Some of that is enlightening, especially when it comes to Jan (Mark Waschke) and Nina (Sabine Timoteo), a married couple who run an advertising firm in Hamburg, have two children, and take regular vacations at a second home they own in Belgium. It's the house there where the break-in occurs, unknown to the family until Nina sees movement and hears voices running down the stairs and outside.

At the same time, both of the kids, teenage Emma (Jule Hermann) and younger Max (Wanja Valentin Kube), are otherwise occupied and don't see anyone, and Jan has just returned from the grocery store and is on the phone with a co-worker—even after he hears his wife's scream inside the house. For obvious reasons, Jan's disinterest in Nina's distress puts some strain on the relationship, but it takes a lot of back-and-forth before that revelation comes to light. Besides, the marriage has been in trouble well before that, as we learn from Jan and Nina's flashbacks.

The dissection of that relationship is the strongest element of this story, as Jan repeatedly takes Nina for granted professionally and personally. Hermann's escalating frustration, as Nina's opinions and accounts are constantly dismissed, provides a degree of sympathy that's otherwise lacking from a narrative that seems more focused on its gimmickry than its characters. The perspectives of the kids don't add much, save for a couple of hints about who the intruders are or what else might have caused Nina's reaction. A sequence that takes the point-of-view of Max's pet rat turns out to be the key to the truth—a jokey moment that inadvertently highlights how these characters are overshadowed by Trocker's trickery.

Beneath the surface, the whole thing seems to subtly serve as an allegory for how xenophobic politics attempt to cover up problems at home—too subtly, perhaps. That, though, just adds another layer of distance and deflection to Human Factors, which complicates a straightforward story about domestic troubles until the complications overwhelm that story.

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