We Are What We Are a.k.a. Somos lo que hay
(2010) 90 Min.
Rated: NR (Gore, nudity)
Country: Mexico
Director: Jorge Michel Grau
Stars: Francisco Barreiro, Alan Chávez, Paulina Gaitán, Carmen Beato
Links: IMDB | Wikipedia
Rating: ★★★★☆
An urban family of cannibals has their world thrown into chaos when the head of their family dies suddenly.
Synopsis:
A man is walking in a shopping mall area, looking at the many mannequins. He keels over and dies suddenly after coughing up a black liquid.
Alfredo (Barreiro) and younger brother Julián (Chavez) are out in the marketplace since their father hasn’t returned home. Their father is a watchmaker and repairs watches. The marketplace owner casts out the duo after telling them their father failed to pay rent for the space for the last 3 weeks.
They go home defeated. Their mother, Patricia (Beato), is stern and yells at them. Meanwhile their sister Sabina (Gaitán) arrives home to inform the family that she found out that their father is dead. Distraught, Patricia goes up to her room. Sabina convinces the boys that one of them must take charge and become the new leader to take their father’s place. They must bring back someone.
Meanwhile, an autopsy is performed on the body and a human finger is found inside the man. The coroner turns over the finger to a detective duo Octavio and Owen. Owen initially brushes off the investigation, but soon decides that he wants the fame and money that come with solving such a case.
Alfredo and Julián’s first attempt in bringing back a body fails as they try to steal a street urchin and learn that large amount of children can stop them from stealing one.
They are encouraged by Sabina to take a prostitute. They take their car down to a street where a group of ladies are working. One walks up to Julián and he punches her and tosses her in the back of the car. Alfredo, the calmer brother, places her in the trunk. When they arrive home they tie the prostitute to a table. The woman begs for her life and offers sex in lieu of her life. Julián gets excited and starts to touch her while Alfredo tries to stop him. Patricia arrives and beats the woman to death. Patricia claims prostitutes aren’t appropriate for the ritual and wraps up the woman in a sheet. While Sabina and Julián help, Alfredo wanders off in search of prey.
Patricia takes the woman and dumps her on the street corner where the other prostitutes are and warns them not to mess with her sons before driving off. The prostitutes report the incident to the police and Octavio and Owen investigate.
Alfredo follows a group of men, his eyes locked on one of them specifically. He follows the man into a gay club. The man offers him a drink and he takes it. The man suddenly kisses Alfredo, startling him. He runs away at first. While on a train he is handed a paper that says “You’re alive”, taking the encouragement he returns to the club and kisses the same man, seducing him and bringing him to his house.
Meanwhile, Patricia has sex with a taxi driver and brings him home. When Alfredo arrives with his man, Julián sees him and says he doesn’t want to eat a homosexual. Alfredo and Julián argue. The older man appears and Patricia beats him with a shovel. The gay man escapes.
The gay man tells local police and the cops run into the projects, looking for the killers. Octavio and Owen are also headed to the projects but don’t inform their fellow police officers as they want to get all the glory.
Patricia and Sabina take the body of the dead man and prepare him for their ritual. Meanwhile, Alfredo and Julián look for the escaped gay man, but they do not find him. On their way home, Octavio draws his weapon at them, but the street cops shoot Octavio as he doesn’t listen to them and doesn’t want Alfredo and Julián to escape.
Owen arrives at the house and Patricia quickly hits him with a shovel before he can hurt any of them. However, the street police are coming soon and the family runs up the stairs to the second story. Bullets are shot at them repeatedly, though they have Owen’s gun. Patricia decides that one of them needs to survive to continue the ritual, so she runs off to the roof.
The two brothers are with Sabina. Alfredo starts to bite Sabina and hands her a paper. Julián shoots his brother dead. Julián is shot to death by the cops and Sabina is taken away in an ambulance to the hospital.
Patricia manages to get away and sits down on a park slide. Slowly a group of prostitutes approach her. The next day we see Patricia dead on the park grounds.
Sabina stealthily escapes the hospital. She opens the paper that reads “You are alive” and stares at a random man on the street determined to make him her victim.
Review:
This film is a looks into the concept of a family of cannibals in an urban situation. It also goes beyond that to explore themes of poverty, corruption and even homosexuality in Mexico. Now none of these themes are deeply delved into but to see them at all in a horror film is pretty encouraging and shows depth.
One retraction on the film is the lack of development in the main family and in the cannibalistic ritual itself. We don’t know what the ritual is, we don’t know why Patricia hates prostitutes so much, we don’t understand the complex relationship between each character, but we at least see that the most resourceful of the family manages to survive.
The film skews more in the vein of a slow paced art film. Not all questions are answered and there’s a lot of mystery to it, but it is an engaging idea, at least for me. The pacing is slower than most modern horror movies.
I saw the American remake version, We Are What We Are (2013), which is quite different! That version is in a rural setting. It doesn’t have the class themes or the mingling of the dregs of society that the original tends to explore a bit.
I recommend this film to anyone who likes their horror tale with a side of family drama and social commentary.
Note:
Tito the Coroner, played by Daniel Giménez Cacho, is a character that also appears in the horror film Cronos (1993) by Guillermo del Toro.