Recommendation of the Week (27/03): We Are What We Are

Mexico City: A man shambles through a shopping mall. His hair and beard are dirty and he looks sweaty, his teeth are yellow and decaying. He walks up to a shop window to gawk at some mannequins and is told to move on by an uptight shopkeeper. A few feet onwards he clutches his stomach, falls to the ground and spews up thick, black bile. He dies alone and ignored, a few moments later the body is dragged away and cleaners mop up the bile. So begins the Mexican horror/ social drama; We are what we are.

We then meet the members of the mans family, oldest son Julian is a hot headed and violent young man, his younger sibling Alfredo is confused and unsure but the family member that is looked to as a leader. Their younger sister Sabina is caring and kind and has a great deal of affection for her brothers. Their matriarch will stop at nothing to protect the family she loves and goes to great degrading lengths to keep them alive. Through an autopsy scene where a finger is discovered in the dead mans stomach we learn the family are actually cannibals and they seem to have been at it for a long time. It is also hinted that the father had a great appetite for hookers and it was this that lead to his downfall and why they are seen as potential targets for the two brothers. The brothers go out hunting into the night trying to pick up strays that they can literally take home for dinner, trying to keep to some mysterious deadline which will violate their usual rituals should they not feed in time. Meanwhile a couple of inept and corrupt cops close in on the family after finding a finger in the dead father’s stomach at the autopsy.

Writer-director Jorge Michel Grau’s film is a grimy dirty kitchen sink drama which just happens to be about cannibals. Its less about the act of eating a human being than it is about going to absurd lengths to survive in one of the poorest places on Earth. There is very little violence or gore, most of the more shocking moments happen off camera or are played out in the shadows so gorehounds may come away a little deflated. The good news is the film looks great, Grau shoots the downtrodden locale and the families apartment with a great use of darkness. Shadows take up a lot of the room, pouring out of every corner adding claustrophobia to the feeling of urban decay. Despite being potentially a very depressing subject there is also quite a bit of dark comedy in the film. A lot of the two brothers attempts to kidnap someone as their next meal are hilarious, especially a scene in which they are bested by a bunch of kids off the street. Also the scene where the mother gives a speech about how the brothers used to pretend to be a taco and leave their sister out of their childhood playtime is giggle inducing. I’m not sure if it was intentional or supposed to be touching. Probably a further example of trying to convince us of these kids grew up with no imagination or hope due to their oppressive lives.

The performances are all top notch, Miriam Balderos as the mother is perfect, a role that is maybe the most sympathetic out of all of them. Displaying lots of heartbreak because of her husband and how he left her and becoming frantic and desperate towards the climax. Above all of them though is Francisco Barreiro as Alfredo, a deeply confused and troubled young man. All through the film you see the tension in him threatening to boil over and in the last twenty minutes the character changes so much revealing that he is perhaps the most damaged out of the whole family.

It seems like Grau may well eventually join the likes of Guillermo Del Toro and Alex De La Iglesia as one of the best Spanish genre filmmakers out there. This is a film with a lot on its mind, not just creeping you out buy making you think about social structures and how society deals with the underclass's who seem to just get poorer.Along with Dogtooth it is one of the best socially conscious horror dramas out there. We Are What We Are is a great debut from a promising new director and well worth checking out.

by Chris Holt

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