Somos Lo Que Hay (Jorge Michel Grau, 2010)

We Are What We Are falls squarely into the bracket of social drama crossed with gore horror. Given the right mix, recently most notably in the case of Let the Right One In, overblowing a character to horrific effect can be highly potent as a vehicle for conveying separation and alienation from societal norms. Get the mix wrong, however, and you're left with unlikeable freaks.
It probably doesn't help that Grau's shot is centered on a family of cannibals in Mexico, suddenly aimless at the loss of their patriarch. Cannibalism may seem, being rooted in feasible reality, a stronger packmule to carry political subtexts than the supernatural recourses to zombies or vampires. But it's precisely because there aren't the freedoms of the otherworldly context that the job in hand actually becomes harder. Having to deal with reality as a framework, creating empathy for the personae becomes of principal importance, and this film seems to forget that, much as the previous year's bizarrely feted misanthropic Dogtooth did, with which it shares more than a few structural elements. You will want the whole family to die long before the inevitable end.

4/10