In the middle of Mexico City, a family are fighting to survive. After the death of their father, the children are faced with a dreadful problem. They are all cannibals and are addicted to human flesh: this is a family bound together by a terrible secret and a horrific appetite for destruction.
Visit official website
Reviews
The Guardian
Peter Bradshaw
"It is horrible because it proposes, subtly and incrementally, a plausible psychological explanation for what is happening, which the audience must retrospectively insert into the narrative: cannibalism is a symptom of the horror, not the cause. And on a more basic, non-metaphorical level, it suggests that in Mexico City, rife with official incompetence, hypocrisy and corruption, the ultimate taboo is broken much more frequently than anyone in authority is prepared to admit."
11/11/2010
Read Full Review
The New Statesman
Ryan Gilbey
"...neat, nasty, but entirely moral movie. Its writer-director, Jorge Michel Grau, presents cannibalism not as some unimaginable perversion, but as a social survival mechanism. "
11/11/2010
Read Full Review
The Observer
Philip French
"We Are What We Are is a film of considerable promise by a gifted movie-maker and, most interestingly, it goes against the current grain in its total lack of sentimentality and its refusal to romanticise its cannibals."
14/11/2010
Read Full Review
The Daily Telegraph
Tim Robey
"Grau uses his rigorously grim scenario to mount a slightly studenty thesis about an underclass feeding on itself."
12/11/2010
Read Full Review
Time Out
Nigel Floyd
"Yet for all its promise, it fails fully to flesh out its gruesome premise, its shaky mythological underpinnings and oblique social commentary, and ultimately fizzles out into cop-thriller clichés."
11/11/2010
Read Full Review
The Times
Wendy Ide
"It’s a neat set-up, but the entrée doesn’t live up to the promise of the appetiser. Inspiration and wit are low on the list on ingredients; the film prefers to focus on brooding longueurs punctuated by occasional bouts of extreme violence involving blunt instruments."
12/11/2010
Read Full Review
Total Film
Matt Glasby
"A sullen effort, shot in muted ochre tones and only occasionally sparking to life through slashes of violence."
02/11/2010
Read Full Review
Empire Magazine
Adam Smith
"Macabre, biting (apologies) and grimly funny, it's a bit like if Mike Leigh were to remake The Hills Have Eyes. From the cannibal’s point of view. In Mexican."
14/11/2010
Read Full Review
The Independent on Sunday
John Walsh
"The trouble is that the basic premise is so risible, and the treatment so earnest, that nit-picking questions assail you. Must the family eat human flesh to avoid starvation – or could it settle for steak tartare?"
14/11/2010
Read Full Review
The Independent
Anthony Quinn
"Questions hang in the air – Why does the mother object to eating "whores"? What "rituals" govern their repulsive appetite? – which are gradually subsumed by more universal issues of family dysfunction, inchoate sexuality and grinding poverty. Not a date movie."
12/11/2010
Read Full Review
The Financial Times
Nigel Andrews
"Unaccountably praised by some critics, the film is like a supermarket sandwich, flavourless as you consume it while leaving a slightly nasty taste in the mouth afterwards."
11/11/2010
Read Full Review