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Francisco Barreiro, Alan Chávez, Paulina Gaitan, Carmen Beato, Jorge Zárate ... see more see more... , Eseban Soberanes , Adrián Aguirre , Miriam Balderas , Juan Carlos Colombo , Esteban Soberanes , Octavio Michel

A middle-aged man dies in the street, leaving his widow and three children destitute. The devastated family is confronted not only with his loss but with a terrible challenge -how to survive. For they... read more read more... are cannibals. They have always existed on a diet of human flesh consumed in bloody ritual ceremonies... and the victims have always been provided by the father. Now that he is gone, who will hunt? Who will lead them? How will they sate their horrific hunger? The task falls to the eldest son, Alfredo, a teenage misfit who seems far from ready to accept the challenge... But without human meat the family will die. Shocking, bloody and deeply moving, WE ARE WHAT WE ARE is a remarkable reinvention of the horror genre - a visceral and powerfully emotional portrait of a family bound by a terrible secret and driven by monstrous appetites. -- (C) IFC Films

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46% liked it

2,755 ratings

Critics

72% liked it

43 critics

Unrated, 1 hr. 39 min.

Directed by: Jorge Michel Grau

Release Date: February 18, 2011

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DVD Release Date: July 26, 2011

Stats: 180 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (180)

  • fernandorafael
    October 11, 2011
    fernandorafael
    Stunning Mexican horror film, heavily influenced by LĂÂĽt den rätte komma in. A family of cannibals struggles after the death of the father, who was in charge of getting the...well, food. Minimalistic setting and score compliment this drama favorably. Outstanding cinematography... read more and a top-notch cast make Somos Lo Que Hay the best Mexican film in recent years to slip under the radar. Writer/director Jorge Michel Grau manages to throw in some important commentary on how cynical and cannibalistic we can be as a society.
  • piranhaa72
    August 27, 2011
    piranhaa72
    Mexico's Tony Manero
  • John2223
    March 29, 2011
    John2223
    "We Are What We Are" is an adequate and bitter family-drama with a compelling storyline and a hint of horror . The movie takes place in a brooding atmosphere and a sub-plot of socio-political criticism, in this case Mexico, but most developing countries of America can be identif... read moreied with it.
    Let yourself be bitten by these cannibals, it certainly deserves a viewing.
  • divinetrash
    March 23, 2011
    divinetrash
    Mexico's new wave of indie cinema has yielded wildly uneven results, but something has always been consistently good: the cinematography. So, it's a pleasure to find out that Somos Lo Que Hay not only looks great, but it's also a very good movie. Part of what is so engaging are t... read morehe characters, which are very well written and portrayed by a talented cast; you feel for them, even root for them, even if the are... well, what they are. A well-paced, serious horror movie that doesn't just gloat on violence.
  • dketu
    November 15, 2010
    dketu
    It reached my maximum levels of disgust. It is not funny pleasant or uplifting but pushing some different unpleasant buttons. Your girlfriend will not like it. I liked it for making me aware of my personal negative limits, the mistakes or technical issues did not matter as much. ... read more
    There were ten people in cinema, a couple left after 20 min. four people left after 35 min and two more 10 min prior to the end. Had chat with fellow on way out and it had rocked his balls as well.
  • sykora259517
    July 31, 2011
    sykora259517
    A Spanish rip off of The Hamiltons only not as cool & and suspenseful. With this you know the whole time the family is a bunch of cannibals where in the Hamiltons you just think they're Serial Killers but its much more than that (I was riveted with the Hamiltons & never saw the ... read moretwist end coming!! & for me that's pretty back cause this kind usually I can sniff out!~) What they are.. is rip off GARBAGE that just doesn't stand up in a variety of ways. & I'm not even counting subtitles. (which don't count) There's not much emotion with the movie except one maybe 2 Anger and desperation. I really didn't get emotionally involved with the characters, at times I'd fast forward through parts just to get to the ending faster. The whole thing is pretty predictable and for those reasons.. I give it an F
  • xterminal
    June 10, 2011
    xterminal
    Somos Lo Que Hay (Jorge Michel Grau, 2010)

    There's a theater near me called the Capitol. It's one of the great commercial bastions of actual honest-to-pete art in Cleveland (if you want a good art film and it's not playing at the Capitol, you're going to have ... read moreto wait for it to hit the Cleveland Institute of Art-funded Cinematheque or head way into the Eastern suburbs to the Cedar Lee Theatre). One of the best things about the Capitol is that, with the help of IFC and melt Bar and Grilled, they have pretty much singlehandedly revived the midnight movie tradition for movies other then the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Last night was interesting: IFC was running Somos Lo Que Hay while Melt was running Say Anything.... I like Say Anything... a great deal, but I've seen it many times, and I believe in Mae West's immortal quote: "between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before." The audience for Say Anything... was overflowing; the entire lobby was packed. That for the Cleveland premiere of Somos Lo Que Hay? Ten. I counted. Choosing the evil you've never tried before, one thinks, is becoming a lost art.

    The good news: Jorge Michel Grau, who has been wowing the underground horror community with fun shorts for years now, has finally made himself a feature film. (Whether he is related to the Jorge Grau who directed such seventies cult horror standards as The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue I do not know.) This is good news because Grau has a fine eye for some of the subtler features of filmmaking, as well as a good sense of how to flesh out an onscreen character, and when you combine those two things, it's pretty difficult to come up with a completely bad film, no matter how micro your budget may be, as long as you get competent actors. The bad news is, Jorge Michel Grau has finally made a feature film, and that's because he didn't translate well from shorts to full-length, but more on that later.

    We open with the scion of a family (Amor's Humberto Yáńez) dying in a Mexico City mall. His body is spirited away by mall staff, a janitor is immediately on the scene to clean up the blood he's vomited on the pavement, and less than a minute later, no one knows the incident even occurred. You were looking for a black comedy? That's about as black as it gets; it's vaguely reminiscent of what Terry Gilliam might have done had Brazil been a gore film. We cut to a family living in a small apartment in the projects, and we are immediately given to understand, through the magic of shot juxtaposition, that he is the father of this clan: mother Patricia (Before Night Falls' Carmen Beato), older brother Alfredo (Perpetuum Mobile's Francisco Barriero), sister Sabina (Sin Nombre's Paulina Gaitan), and younger brother... I cannot for the life of me remember his name, and IMDB is failing me. It begins with a J an d ends with an o and I'm 99% sure it is not Javiero, which is what my brain keeps telling me. In any case, the boy is played by the late Alan Chávez, killed in a shootout in Mexico City shortly after the film was shot. (And since I saw this on the big screen, I can't simply go back to the DVD and check.) In any case, the family is now at loose ends as to what to find for dinner tomorrow. Which is a problem, as it turns out, because the family are cannibals. And it's not at all long before we discover why the death of their father hits so hard, aside from the obvious; the four remaining members of the clan are pretty much helpless when it comes to hunting for food. Much of the rest of the film, which takes place over the next couple of days, is focused on Alfredo's increasingly desperate attempts to feed his family. There's a subplot involving a couple of fifth-rate cops trying to figure out where the finger discovered in dad's stomach at the autopsy came from that's there pretty much for comic relief.

    And what's here is good. At least one reviewer called it "the best film [he'd] seen so far in 2010" (at twitchfilm) and compared it to Lĺt den Rätte Komma In. On the other hand, I've seen a lot of people compare it (and not favorably) to the mediocre After Dark Horrorfest entry The Hamiltons form a few years back, and yes, there are similarities, though I'm not sure there's enough to say there's anything more than an influence here. (That influence is, however, undeniable.) But just because film A is influenced by film B does not make film A necessarily inferior, and such is not the case here; Grau takes that premise and loads it up with all sorts of subtle wonderment and far, far better camerawork than in that other flick. Grau's camerawork is so claustrophobic that even the father's death at the beginning-the only shot in the film outside during the day-almost chokes the viewer with its closeness. Also of note, and I wish I knew more about this guy so I could expound for a while, is a fantastic soundtrack from a chap named Enrico Chapela, who understands more about dissonance and noise than perhaps any other composer I've heard in a feature film (the arguable exception would be Graeme Revell when he's in a bad mood and reverts to the SPK days).

    On the other hand there's all the stuff that's kind of hinted at but then never goes anywhere. The sexual tension within the family is ratcheted up about twenty minutes into the film, and for the rest of it you can tell there's an incestuous love triangle just bursting to find its way out of Grau's head and onto the screen, but it never shows up despite a couple of scenes that stop a knife's blade away. And while the characters are fleshed out, the plot is skinny enough that the movie does feel as if it's a touch too long. But instead of wanting the movie to be shorter, I wanted Grau to explore more about the cops, or more about the plot points that never show up, or even more about the awesome guys in the funeral home who appear for only a single scene. Grau only scratches the surface, and it's frustrating. But it's beautifully shot and well-acted, which makes it a refreshing change from the vast majority of Hollywood horror films of the recent past. *** 1/2
  • bloodflower722
    April 17, 2011
    bloodflower722
    It's not quite a horror movie. It reminded me a lot of Dogtooth because of the dysfunctional and psychopathic family. The movie was more about how the family coped with their existence and "addiction" in an immoral world. It was an interesting movie.
  • shanaym12
    March 22, 2011
    shanaym12
    Lets face it ,when it comes to people it's all summarizes in who leads the pack and what they eat.

    It's hard for every family to make ends meet when the breadwinner passes away... harder for some families than the others!! If you ask me cannibalism falls under another form of ... read moreminority in this society filled with minorities who lead a harder life than most, although cannibalism would be a weird one!!

    Don't all humans feed on others? Isn't it the minority who faces the most troubled in life?

    The movie made me forget how I felt about different believes and engage in the problem any lifestyle brings on its members.

View All We Are What We Are Reviews

Critic Reviews

Mark Olsen
February 24, 2011
Mark Olsen, Los Angeles Times

An unexpectedly rich exploration of family bonds, blood rituals and the oftentimes zombie-like desire to assume the roles proscribed to each of us, played out with a sharp undertow of political allego... Full Review

Jeannette Catsoulis
February 18, 2011
Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times

Unfolding in an impoverished neighborhood in Mexico City, this disturbing debut paints social decay with bold, elegant strokes and dizzying camera angles. Full Review

V.A. Musetto
February 18, 2011
V.A. Musetto, New York Post

Grau's script is intelligent, and it has something to say about family and social dysfunction. You just might want to skip meat for a few days. Full Review

Ian Buckwalter
February 17, 2011
Ian Buckwalter, NPR

Like zombie auteur George Romero at his best, Grau locks his sights on his social commentary of choice and goes after it with the zeal of a 19-year-old cannibal girl sinking an ax into the skull of he... Full Review

J. Hoberman
February 15, 2011
J. Hoberman, Village Voice

We Are What We Are is a darkly comic social allegory as well as an atmospheric little genre flick. Full Review

Chuck Bowen
August 8, 2011
Chuck Bowen, Slant Magazine

A competent barebones transfer of a horror film that deserves to win a wider audience among the Netflix crowd. Full Review

Laura Clifford
July 20, 2011
Laura Clifford, Reeling Reviews

Grau equates his cannibal family much like Tobe Hooper's Texas clan - as disenfranchised poor people living on the fringes of society struggling with their own familial power structure. Full Review

Jeremy Heilman
July 14, 2011
Jeremy Heilman, MovieMartyr.com

If the resulting work ultimately fails to completely marry its disparate goals, it's to Grau's credit that he manages to make this slow-burning horror drama work as well as he does. Full Review

Shawn Levy
May 26, 2011
Shawn Levy, Oregonian

Takes a what-if situation and drives it rather unimaginatively into the exact places you might imagine it would go. Full Review

Dustin Putman
February 28, 2011
Dustin Putman, DustinPutman.com

Time and again promises answers and payoffs that do not come. Instead of being enigmatic for a reason, the film feels simply half-formed. Full Review

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