We Are What We Are
Ambiguity has often proven to be the key component of great horror, from the bleak ending of John Carpenter'sThe Thing to the identity and questionable existence of the ghostly black-haired terrorizer in Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury's Inside. And in the case of Jorge Michel Grau's We Are What We Are, lack of exposition and an air of genuine confusion are key to the film's modest successes. This sense of beguilement is palpable from the moment the film opens with what looks like a homeless straggler wandering an upscale mall in Mexico City before collapsing to the ground, hacking up tar-black liquid and dying. It's only when an autopsy is performed and a lady's finger is removed from the man's stomach that a beacon points to where Grau, who also provided the script, is heading.
But even before the autopsy is performed, sending two loser cops on a quest for public glory, the essential mystery of the man in the mall is confounded by the introduction of his family. His two sons man a booth at the local market advertising watch repairs and selling jewelry, but an altercation between a costumer and the younger brother, Julian (Alan Chavez), rouses the proprietors of the market to call in a debt that they cannot pay. The eldest sibling, Alfredo (Francisco Barreiro), is more of the brooding type, a demeanor not helped when his sister, Sabina (Miriam Balderas), breaks the news about poppa and insists that Alfredo must become the family's leader and find someone for the "ritual."
The exact purpose of the ritual is never disclosed but the family's unique appetite gradually becomes crystal clear. Grau's intentions, however, are not simply to induce horror from the sight of a few cannibals chowing down on helpings of tender human thigh meat but to draw attention to the depleted humanity and morally bankrupt social structure that is commonplace in modern-day Mexico. We Are What We Are in fact has much more to do with American Psycho than it does The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, although it has a grubby, grisly atmosphere somewhat similar to the latter. The cops decide to investigate on the hopes of meeting the president and their interest in a hooker's brutal death is null until the promise of some time with an underage street-walker is offered. Kidnappings and beatings are daily occurrences that are ignored; homeless children form gangs underneath highways and bridges; incest lacks all but the faintest whiff of taboo.
In this climate, a family that feasts on one unlucky cab driver is barely negligible, but they won't eat just anything. There are strong notes of religious satire here when the mother chastises her children and her deceased husband for bringing home prostitutes and homosexual men home to eat. The latter plays a particularly fascinating part in an excellent sequence that sees Alfredo following a pack of flirtatious club boys to an underground dance club, where it becomes impossible to differentiate whether it is his hunger or sexual urges that both allure and disgust him. All hell breaks loose when Alfredo returns home with a young man at the same time that his mother brings home the aforementioned cab driver, whom she lured home after a quickie in his backseat, leading to the film's vicious climax.
Uneven as it is, We Are What We Are is a delightful bit of grotesque black humor, well performed by its actors and smartly paced by Grau, who shows admirable restraint by only dabbling in gore and sanguinary catharsis. The sequel-baiting ending fails to entice but it again offers an ambiguous ellipsis rather than a simple period, though to be fair even the most cut-and-dry endings could spawn sequels nowadays. So though Grau's promising debut doesn't announce itself as a new classic as thunderously as Let the Right One In or [rec], it nevertheless has the potential to haunt you with images much harder to wash away than the puddles of necrotic fluid mopped up by a mall custodian, who looks at a corpse with no less ambivalence than those who run his country.
But even before the autopsy is performed, sending two loser cops on a quest for public glory, the essential mystery of the man in the mall is confounded by the introduction of his family. His two sons man a booth at the local market advertising watch repairs and selling jewelry, but an altercation between a costumer and the younger brother, Julian (Alan Chavez), rouses the proprietors of the market to call in a debt that they cannot pay. The eldest sibling, Alfredo (Francisco Barreiro), is more of the brooding type, a demeanor not helped when his sister, Sabina (Miriam Balderas), breaks the news about poppa and insists that Alfredo must become the family's leader and find someone for the "ritual."
The exact purpose of the ritual is never disclosed but the family's unique appetite gradually becomes crystal clear. Grau's intentions, however, are not simply to induce horror from the sight of a few cannibals chowing down on helpings of tender human thigh meat but to draw attention to the depleted humanity and morally bankrupt social structure that is commonplace in modern-day Mexico. We Are What We Are in fact has much more to do with American Psycho than it does The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, although it has a grubby, grisly atmosphere somewhat similar to the latter. The cops decide to investigate on the hopes of meeting the president and their interest in a hooker's brutal death is null until the promise of some time with an underage street-walker is offered. Kidnappings and beatings are daily occurrences that are ignored; homeless children form gangs underneath highways and bridges; incest lacks all but the faintest whiff of taboo.
In this climate, a family that feasts on one unlucky cab driver is barely negligible, but they won't eat just anything. There are strong notes of religious satire here when the mother chastises her children and her deceased husband for bringing home prostitutes and homosexual men home to eat. The latter plays a particularly fascinating part in an excellent sequence that sees Alfredo following a pack of flirtatious club boys to an underground dance club, where it becomes impossible to differentiate whether it is his hunger or sexual urges that both allure and disgust him. All hell breaks loose when Alfredo returns home with a young man at the same time that his mother brings home the aforementioned cab driver, whom she lured home after a quickie in his backseat, leading to the film's vicious climax.
Uneven as it is, We Are What We Are is a delightful bit of grotesque black humor, well performed by its actors and smartly paced by Grau, who shows admirable restraint by only dabbling in gore and sanguinary catharsis. The sequel-baiting ending fails to entice but it again offers an ambiguous ellipsis rather than a simple period, though to be fair even the most cut-and-dry endings could spawn sequels nowadays. So though Grau's promising debut doesn't announce itself as a new classic as thunderously as Let the Right One In or [rec], it nevertheless has the potential to haunt you with images much harder to wash away than the puddles of necrotic fluid mopped up by a mall custodian, who looks at a corpse with no less ambivalence than those who run his country.
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