We Are What We Are (Jorge Michel Grau, 2010)

7/10
The enthusastic line from a review used to push We Are What We Are is "does for cannibals what Let the Right One In did for vampires!". It's not hard to imagine that's what the filmmakers were going for, but I don't think it's quite true. Indeed, they've taken a subgenre that typically belongs to a schlocky horror genre and turned it into a more dramatic and emotionally weighty film (while still retaining some blood and gore, as LTROI did), but I don't think it succeeds as well. It's got a good story - when their father and provider dies, a mother and her three temperamental kids have to find a way to provide for themselves, which of course consists of finding human victims - and it's very well directed. There's a symphonic score that constantly threatens to be too much, but I liked it. It touches on a lot of themes (fatherless families, domineering mothers, family ties on the whole, homosexuality, poverty), many of which are probably representative of pertinent themes in Mexico that would require a better knowledge of the region to fully appreciate. I felt there were a lot of solid elements in place but the result only came off as "okay", and I probably would have liked it less if I didn't have such a prediliction for horror movies that at least try to be something more.