WE ARE WHAT WE ARE Review

Release Date: September 27, 2013 (Limited)
MPAA Rating:   R
Director:   Jim Mickle
Film Pulse Score:   5/10

The Parkers are a family that tend to keep to themselves and their massive land up in the Catskills; occasionally someone from the family will stopover at the trailer park that resides on their property or, perhaps, visit town and buy some supplies. Which is exactly how Mickle’s We Are What We Are starts – the matriarch of the family amid a torrential downpour and suffering from some unknown illness, buying supplies at the local general store. On her way back to the truck, she stops and becomes transfixed by a missing person’s flyer before coughing up a grievous amount of blood, passing out and drowning in the rainwater.

Why was she so mesmerized by the missing person’s flyer?

Well, if you have seen any of the trailers or happened to see Jorge Michel Grau‘s 2010 original film of the same name you already know exactly why she was so mesmerized by the flyer. Her family…happen to be cannibals and, more than likely, her family kidnapped that missing person and consumed their flesh. This is the biggest problem with Jim Mickle’s We Are What We Are, it is a slow-burn horror film preoccupied with building an atmosphere of tension and foreboding anxiety, but the viewer already knows what that tension and foreboding will ultimately reveal; even if the viewer has not seen the trailers or the original film, it becomes quickly apparent as to the true nature of the Parker family, so the viewer has to sit through a tiresome hour or so of build-up to an already acknowledged reveal.

However, the film (and the Parkers) must soldier on, carrying out their ancient, ancestral tradition. With the mother now deceased the eldest daughter, Iris (Ambyr Childers), is in-charge of preparing the meals and looking after her siblings – Rose (Julia Garner) and Rory (Jack Gore). While their father Frank (Bill Sage) spends his time fixing watches in the shed out back or reading from their ancient familial bible and quoting scripture…generally creeping everyone out with his overacting.

The highlight of We Are What We Are comes in the form of two great performances from the Parker sisters – Ambyr Childers as Iris and Julia Garner as Rose. They carry the entire film by effective communicating a wide range of emotions, such as loss, guilt, fear and all the other emotions that go into being part of a cannibalistic family, now forced to kill, butcher, prepare and eat humans, all while in the ominous presence of their unhinged father. Another solid performance comes from Michael Parks as Doc Barrow, the local doctor who’s young daughter has gone missing some time ago and happens to slowly uncover the true nature of the Parker family. Parks brings a much-needed gentleness to his character currently residing in a black-as-night, Southern Gothic horror film; however, he does bring some threatening menace to the table when need be.

There are a good deal of positives when it comes to Jim Mickle’s remake – the picturesque setting, the aforementioned performances, the slow build-up and a handful of grisly scenes; however, most of those positives are undermined over and over again by some seemingly out-of-place directorial choices. The main culprit being the overly-melodramatic score that heavily populates the film, instead of creating the desired contemplative mood it renders the dread and tension almost downright silly. Couple the score with the ending that also quickly deteriorates into a farcical B-movie and you have a horror film seemingly at odds with itself.  If Mickle can smooth out the uneven aspects of We Are What We Are in his future endeavors we might be presented with a truly fantastic horror film, but for now it is what it is.