Review of We Are What We Are (2013) by Spangle — 20 Sep 2016

We Are What We Are is a film that simply was not up my alley for many different reasons. Aside from being incredibly cliche, the ending is far too much, and the film feels as if it is far more content just trying to shock its audience instead of creating any unique atmosphere. Though there are a few great scenes, the film's atmosphere is slack, the pacing is slow, and the film as a whole suffers from these inadequacies.

From the very beginning, the film opts to start with a quote said by a character later on in the film. With the name Alyce Parker, the name is clearly there to grab your attention due to its similarities to Alice Parker, a woman killed during the Salem Witch Trials. Though our Alyce is deeply religious, she has a limited role. The rest of the film focuses on her family and their deep religious beliefs and their "purity" of being cannibals in the name of the Lord. It feels quite often that director Jim Mickle is trying to make some kind of astute comment about religion and its effects on the mind, but unfortunately, it often falls incredibly short of anything profound. Other than, "extremism is bad" and commentary about misguided notions derived from religion, the film really does nothing too deep, in spite of clear overtures into the arena.

The pacing of the film is pretty bad, but this is in large part due to its cliches. It slacks as you wait to see what cliche will be pulled out next. Here, a "dead" man is left lying only to get up seconds later, a police procedural plays out, and a man takes a shovel to the brain to play out the stereotypical father-daughter relationship cliche. These scenes do not ride on any sort of atmosphere, yet take up a large portion of the film. Instead, any atmosphere Mickle may have tried to create is wiped out in a sea of cliche that turns atmosphere and dread into merely "can we get this over with? I know what's going to happen now.".

These cliches are extra disappointing with juxtaposed with the best sequences in the film. The killing of "the monster" and the dinner sequence are absolutely killer. Very non-violent, yet so gross and creepy, it makes it feel as if bugs are crawling on your skin. With the dinner sequence in particular, Mickle expertly elongates the scene for full effect and by the end, you feel as if you need a shower.

With such strong scenes in its arsenal, it makes the cliched ending that much more disappointing. With the confrontation, shootout, faked deaths, and every other horror movie cliche in the book as to how to end a horror movie, We Are What We Are upends itself. The only originality is the very ending, but it is not horrifying. It is merely torture porn. As a non-fan of torture fan, it was way too much. However, the violence and action in the film had a similar kind of feeling throughout, even when it was not as visceral. It just never felt justified. It felt like a step-for-step Horror Movie 101 plot that just pulled out all of the tricks without any of the heart, soul, or justification. As a result, much of We Are What We Are just comes and goes with little-to-no fanfare. With the final sequence in particular, it feels as if Mickle keeps looking at you and saying, "Pretty f****d up, eh?" without any reason for the scene dragging on or even existing.

Overall, We Are What We Are is simply not that good. Jim Mickle pulls the very best of many different horror films into his film with nary an inclination to investigate what made these scenes actually work in the first place. I am fine with cliche films, as long as they can also copy the same feeling the original use of the cliche was able to conjure. With this one, they feel soulless and without justification. That said, there are a few strokes of genius in this largely misguided film that does not have much to say about anything it touches on.