Young. Wild. Hungry.
Director: Jorge Michael Grau
Writer: Jorge Michael Grau
Cast: Adrian Aguirre, Francisco Barreiro, Carmen Beato, Alan Chavez, Paulina Gaitan, Daniel Gimenez Cacho, Miguel Angel Hoppe, Raul Kennedy, Esteban Soberanes, Jorge Zarate
Studio: IFC Films
Special Features: Making of & Trailer
Times are tough – the toughest I’ve witnessed in my admittedly meager 27 years on this earth. The global economy’s in bad shape, and those consequences trickle-down into all of our homes. Many have lost jobs as companies try to minimize losses, and money is tight as a result. Some families manage to hold it together by living paycheck to paycheck, but even those minimal conditions still prove to be too much for many. We Are What We Are is an interesting film for its inventive use of cannibalism as a means to create a family drama and comment on modern-day Mexico, but it’s inability to create any emotional investment in its characters ultimately renders it inconsequential.
A man stumbles and staggers his way throughout a mall. He soon collapses, vomits blood and quickly dies. His body is dragged away, and a mop cleans up his blood. Just like that he’s gone. But the man had a family, and it turns out all he’s left them with are his debts. He had a small watch repair stand, which was the primary source of income for the family, but he spent much of the earnings on whores. More important than his financial obligations, however, he also brought home the food – a difficult task when you’re a family of cannibals.Now, with their father dead, his survivors – a wife, two sons and a daughter – are sent into a tailspin, as stress within the home, which has clearly been festering for a while, increases under the pressure of filling the vacancy left by their father’s death. Someone must now assume leadership of the family and secure food for them – but who? Each of his survivors are flawed in their own way. And while they struggle to transition, some live and many die, as the secret that holds them together, slowly tears them apart.
For a horror film about a family of cannibals, We Are What We Are doesn’t really concern itself with cannibalism all that much. The family never sits down to dine on anyone, the “ritual” they speak of is only seen in part, and there’s no explanation as to where their practices come from or why they do what they do. Characters are simple, one-word summations (“hothead,” “resentful,” “manipulative,” etc.), yet there’s clearly depth and motivation behind each of them. But as the title suggests, perhaps that’s the whole point, these people are what they are, and we’re simply witnesses to their current struggle. But this leaves their dysfunctional family dynamic and social commentary to carry the film.Director Jorge Michael Grau takes shots at the ineptitude of the police with a subplot involving two detectives trying to identify the cannibals solely for the money and fame that will come with solving the case. He mixes a little black humor in with their investigation but never muddles the film’s tone. He also suggests cannibalism may be a practice more widespread than just one family, as one of the detectives actually says, “So many people eat others in this city.” But his film is stylish with a grimy aesthetic that suits both the subject matter and the poverty-stricken family. An excellent sound design also utilizes the family’s rather obsessive collection of clocks to build tension on more than one occasion and discordant strings to accent events.
But my problem with the film is the characters. While I want to somehow try and relate to or at least understand these people, and it’s because Grau has such an engaging premise, his characters are all unlikable. The family is extremely dysfunctional and members repeatedly treat each other like shit – the only people in the whole world they can trust enough to be themselves around – and it becomes hard to feel anything for them when things get bad. They’re in an “us against the world” situation and there’s no “us” to rally around for the family or the audience. Only one character has any type of developmental arc, which seems a little out of place within the film, and I ultimately didn’t care all that much whether any of them were able to survive and carry out their mysterious ritual.
We Are What We Are is what it is – a beautifully shot film with an interesting premise but little follow-through.