Adorable Humans

We usually associate fairy tales with children as the target audience – through the moral of the stories, we tend to teach them some valuable life lessons about how to be good, decent and worthy. However, the versions of the fairy tales we all know and remember from our childhood, as well as the versions we are reading today to our children differ greatly from the original, folklore or early romantic versions that were way darker, grittier and dirtier and taught children not only to be good, but also to survive in the harsh world. The brothers Grimm were always, well, grim and Hans Christian Andersen was not much gentler on its audience.

Speaking of which, the new Danish anthology movie imagined as a modern horror riff on the latter’s works is definitely not something you would like to show to your kids. It features a bit of sex and drugs and violence. Thankfully, the rock and roll component is not the issue any more. It also takes a deep plunge into human emotions against the background of modern lifestyle, offering thought provocation instead of simple solutions. Adorable Humans is definitely something you would appreciate seeing on your own or in the company of a consenting adult, and there might be some opportunities for it at the smaller niche festivals.

Written and directed by Anders Jon, The Dead Man tells the story that starts with care replaced by lust, which morphs into obsession. Jonas (Albert Rudbeck Lindhardt, glimpsed in Another Round and Riders Of Justice) is a care worker taking care of an elderly patient (Knud Klausen), but once he meets and starts a relationship with a “crazy” young woman Sofie (Sus Wilkins), he begins ditching his responsibilities. Little does he know that his new girlfriend and his patient are connected in an unearthly way…

In Michael Kunov’s The Story of a Mother, the titular character Maj (Mille Maria Dalsgaard) does everything in her power to protect her ailing son Lukas (Marinus Refnov) and to keep him alive. However, death and insanity do not care much for grief, and the end result is definitely moving. The Snow Queen (written and directed by Kasper Jul) tells the story of shame and desire, as we follow Gerda (Mie Gren, who worked with the filmmaker on his features The Deer House and Rotten Flowers) wrestling with mental health issues and her boyfriend Kaj (Adam Ild Rohweder) trying to help her through them. The fact that she is in possession of a mirror does not work in her favour, as the whole thing spins into a direction of a shocker.

Finally, Michael Panduro’s Auntie Toothache adds some rock and roll into the mix, which should not come as a surprise having in mind that the writer/director has made several music videos in the extreme metal genres. Professional loser Benny (Peter Høgsbro) joins a band on the verge of making it as a singer and songwriter, but he suffers from writer’s block. The best he can think of is turning to his like-minded aunt (Iben Skau) who might have some mystical powers to help him, but in return he should follow her instructions closely, which is far from guaranteed given his stubbornness, selfishness and the devil-may-care attitude.

For an anthology movie, Adorable Humans is pretty consistent both in the terms of style and substance. All four filmmakers use the pretext of the fairytales to deal with the internal emotional and mental states of the characters that are clear stand-ins for modern everymen and -women. Style-wise, they show that they are proper horror enthusiasts, opting for practical effects that are sometimes gory, but always palpable. They also follow the trend of the slow-burning pacing, simmering with tension that occasionally explodes with an efficient jump scare.

Some shortcomings might be observed in the framing device that is actually a VFX-addled version of flipping pages of a book that seems like a computer game animation from circa 2003. It might have found its way into the movie on purpose, as a stylistic statement, but also as a by-product of an extremely tight budget.

Luckily, the filmmakers behind the project also decided to reinforce the structure of the film with some internal links between the stories, which means that their scripts had to be collaborative works. That kind of soft and respectful collaboration is a rare sight when it comes to anthology movies in which filmmakers use the little time they have to express some flare and draw attention. This way, Adorable Humans resembles an indie-label conceptual album of a heavy, hardcore or simply noisy band. It might not be something that will suit everybody’s taste, but those who like that kind of stuff will probably be ready to go an extra mile and love it.

Reviewed on: 17 Jan 2026