Review of We Are What We Are (2013) by Michael W — 06 Mar 2015

I went into this film without a plot-outline or what to expect. It opens like a melo-drama, then turns into a horror and before you know your looking at a human-Zombie. I am sure if you knew its plot the film would have surprised you more, I did not know a thing. If I had an incline to the story, I may have expect a cannibal horror film- maybe something with a Texas Chainsaw inspired family that crave on the un-expected, but no- from the look of the films cinematography in the beginning, something that has the same grain and color imposed as the popular Walking Dead TV series- you know its gonna be different. I took it as it came along, as would the average movie goer, it was macabre and thin in story in the beginning as a Mother dies from collapsing in the parking lot and slams her head on a metal pole with the most recoiling sound effect, enough to make me jump. After we are introduced to the grieving-family, we are introduced to the Doctor played by the man, Michael Parks, I think its awesome Parks has gotten an adrenalin shot to his career by directors like Kevin Smith putting him in Red State and of course Tarantino who used him before in Kill Bill and Dusk Till Dawn then Django as one of the Miners in LeQuint Dicky Mining Co.

The now mother-less Family, a Father and two Sister and a Brother, need to cope with there life without there mother. The Doctor finds she collapsed from on-set Parkinson Disease. He later finds a human bone in the forest. His young daughter went missing before the film began, he tries explaining it to the law but they ignore him, as usual.

The family seem to be sick, it is later found by the Doctor with suspicions something happened to his missing daughter that the family have an inherited a disease Kuru that is contracted from cannibalism, there ancestors were one of those unfortunate families going out to the great plains, instead of the gold-rush or the American Dream, I'm sure they are two and the same, but the disease miraculously has been passed down to the family who need to consume human meat to keep the disease from killing them. The children soon have to face the truth, when they do- they find there father is losing his mind.

There are couple things this film does wrong, it focuses on things that are not interesting enough to care about, when they should of been focusing on Michael Parks, the Doctor trying to find out were all the human bones in the forest are coming from, they follow a love interests who eventually dies anyway, while they should of focused on the few scenes of there ancestors and how they came to have this curse, they follow out boring scenes that keep repeating themselves "were are so sad, our mothers dead". An interesting story idea, very original, but the moment during the credits it said 'based on a screenplay', anything I thought was original or good about this film was flushed down the drain. When a film finishes you ask yourself.

Was it entertaining?

Kinda.

Will you watch it again!

Nope.

So no this film failed a good story, although it is not a original story from the filmmakers, I would have enjoyed the movie and still liked it if they had done a better justice to its story instead of gloating on boring scenes as-well as its rushed ending.