I’m not certain, but I’d guess that the writer of the screenplay for We Are What We Are (a remake of a 2010 Mexican film) started with its final gruesome scenes and then assembled a back-story that would lead to them. This movie exists so you can remark to your friends afterwards how — holy hell! — they have got to see the crazy stuff that goes down during the climax of this tale of the reclusive Parker family.
Their secrets are unburied after Mrs. Parker mysteriously dies in the midst of a shopping trip. It’s a doctor (Michael Parks) in their small upstate New York town who slowly unravels the horror that’s been passed down from generation to generation. Unfortunately, the truth about what’s going on is so obvious so early in the film that when the revelation finally comes it feels as though the characters are catching up to our knowledge instead of the other way around. Until then there’s a lot of twiddling of thumbs, waiting for the story to get there.
Frank Parker (Bill Sage) mourns at the loss of his wife, but soon enough turns his mind to the family’s upcoming annual ritual. The dutiful oldest daughter Iris (Ambyr Childers) knows that because of her mother’s death much of the responsibility for the customary feast will fall to her. Her sister Rose (Julia Garner) is more reluctant to carry on the traditional ways and pleads with her sister that they take their young brother and flee to a new life.
Flashbacks told through the reading of an ancestral diary establish that the Parkers have lived on their land for hundreds of years and have done whatever it’s taken to survive, believing it their duty as part of a divine plan.
Look, you’ve maybe already guessed what’s going on, based on the little I’ve mentioned here. If you’re curiously still drawn by the bloody promise of that final act, you’re in for much Gothic-style tedium.
Just wait to watch that scene out of context later, once it finds its way to YouTube. It’ll make as much sense.
