WE ARE WHAT WE ARE
Written and directed by: Jorge Michel Grau
Starring: Francisco Barreiro, Alan Chávez, Paulina Gaitan
WE ARE WHAT WE ARE is one hell of a family drama. Insanely talented newcomer Jorge Michel Grau introduces us to a quiet Mexican family of cannibals whose house is turned upside down after they lose their father, the man responsible for finding and killing their meals.
Grau’s film isn’t an out-and-out horror movie like some may hope for. While it does have many moments of terror and gore, the movie is really a family drama wrapped up in a layer of bloody human flesh. That’s good news for us because without the family drama, WE ARE WHAT WE ARE wouldn’t be nearly as different and special. As it stands, it definitely is different and special and my favorite film of Fantastic Fest 2010.
Francisco Barreiro plays Alberto, the older brother and new patriarch of his family. After his father’s sudden death, Alberto has to step up and provide for his kin, which means finding someone to kill and eat. Aside from that little task, Alberto is also dealing with the typical feelings that most young men have when growing up in a controlling family, he wants to break free and discover himself. As revealed throughout WE ARE WHAT WE ARE, there is a lot more that he’s hiding. His character is a quiet mess of a person, unhappy with who he is and where he’s at.
The late Alan Chávez plays Alberto’s younger brother Julian and Paulina Gaitan plays his quiet and methodical sister Sabina. Julian is the loud and aggressive one, violent in an intense and disturbing way. There’s a dark look in Julian’s eyes that suggests he’d be killing people even if he didn’t eat them. On the other hand, Sabina is all but locked inside their dark little house, forbidden from leading the family by its overbearing and near-hysterical mother. Yet, it is she who makes most of the suggestions to Alberto, told through whispers when no one is listening. Sabina cannot be front and center but she can quietly guide the family in her own way. While radically different, these three siblings pull together in their father’s absence and plot a way to carry on their tradition.
The film builds tension while also highlighting the children (mostly Alberto’s) personal strife wonderfully. The movie is a perfect example of a slow burn thriller with no loud score or sound cues to indicate what we should be feeling. Instead, we follow the family as they try and grieve while looking to their future. Another element that adds to the movie is the quiet panic that is quickly spreading throughout the house. As atrocious as it is, this is life and death for them. They need to eat. While they are never screaming or tearing their hair out, we can see just how dire the situation is. The fact that we know how high the stakes are combined with the slow dissolving of the family really ranks up the emotions and stress.
There are features of WE ARE WHAT WE ARE that don’t work. A side story with a local detective investigating the father’s death that leads nowhere. Well, it actually does lead somewhere but it arrives at its destination way too quickly and feels unnecessary and rushed. As well, there’s so much more to each of the three children that we feel somewhat shorted when the movie ends, as if we missed many more illuminating moments, especially with Julian and Sabina.
Some people I’ve spoken with say WE ARE WHAT WE ARE is too distant to be emotionally effective and that may be true for some people but I was completely sucked in. While I was more intrigued than involved with the characters in the film, the inner conflicts (Alberto wanting to break free of his family, Julian and his sociopathic tendencies, Sabina being locked away) and the film’s commitment to keep things quiet and slow are approaches you don’t often see explored in a horror film.
When WE ARE WHAT WE ARE really changes gears and becomes a straight-up horror film, we are treated to a taut, well-oiled sequence of events that (spoiler alert!) may or may not lead to the family’s destruction. It’s here that Grau really picks things up and the action starts moving like dominoes falling one by one. Watching this part of the movie, I knew we were witnessing a film maker who completely understood his genre and craft. The last act of WE ARE WHAT WE ARE is damn near flawless.
There are moments when I almost forgot the task at hand. It’s a true testament to the film that I was starting to rally behind a family of murderous cannibals. That’s the brilliance of this movie, it’s a horror movie that puts off the horror in favor of real emotional drama. At its gory core, WE ARE WHAT WE ARE is really about the trials that everyone in a family must go through. We are cast into a group, stuck there and are forced to grow together. There are things about ourselves and our upbringing that we can’t change, we truly are stuck with what we’re given. The family in WE ARE WHAT WE ARE know that better than most.
4.5 out of 5
