Human Factors review – break-in thriller gets lost in a winding narrative

A door slamming, a yell from the stairs, a bloody nose. This sequence is repeated, examined, and exhausted multiple times over, from different angles and perspectives, in Ronny Trocker's political family drama Human Factors. But his sophomore film is a meandering melodramatic thriller whose mystifying premise is lost to a repetitively circular narrative.

The film tells the story of an upper-middle-class family falling apart at the seams. Behind the smokescreen of domestic bliss, French-German couple Nina (Sabine Timoteo) and Jan (Mark Waschke) take their kids for an escape break by the Belgian sea. Emma (Jule Hermann) and younger Max (Wanja Valentin Kube), along with Zorro the rat, disperse through the house, their parents not far behind. Then we hear a door slam, some yelling on the stairs, and Nina emerges with a bloody nose. Nina is convinced she saw strangers and it was a break-in with nothing stolen or damaged, but as the police investigate the individual testimonies don’t add up.

Revisiting this sequence becomes the driving wedge to the continued fragmentation of the family. Slowly unravelling with a non-linear approach, Trockers’ storytelling is apt for characters whose preservation of self-image acts as their driving motivation. The film goes back and forth between pre and post break-in, and while these overlapping sequences fill in some gaps, they also result in more diverting questions. The most dramatic of these centres around Nina and Jan’s work relationship. Their advertising agency is falling apart over personal differences and now their marriage is starting to crumble, the internal conflict adding to the layers of miscommunication over what exactly it is this family fears.

While these shifting perspective diversions help vanquish the lingering ambiguity that is often synonymous with European thrillers, the characters of Human Factors are swapped between in a frustrating degree. Trocker's mediation, through multiple angles, distracts from this cast’s acting prowess. Hermann, playing Emma indulging in her rebellious teen desires, for example, feels especially underused. Elsewhere, Timoteo is the silent but formidable force of this film, the mother at the heart of this tangled web. Nina walks with a hardened gaze and an empty smile as her husband’s hand on the small of her back guides her every step, Timoteo’s pivotal performance displaying the contrast of saving face while her internal resentment quietly builds.

Lacking any distinct visual flare, Human Factors becomes an arduous watch only interrupted by the inclusion of a handful of jump-scares that come out of nowhere, snapping back your attention after it has repeatedly slipped. The volatile editing and irregular pacing does not help the core impetus of Human Factors which is, quite simply, a non-event.

Human Factors is streaming on MUBI from 17 February.