Jim Mickle’s We Are What We Are (a remake of the 2010 Mexican horror film of the same name) received a lot of buzz from its Sundance premiere earlier in the year though we first saw the film a few months later when it played during the Directors Fortnight at Cannes. More recently we had the opportunity to sit down with Mickle to chat about his film in our interview. The film is now starting to make its way into a wider public release and to give a little more background on the film they have released a short featurette.

The featurette gives some insight on how important it is to question certain traditions, especially growing up. We Are What We Are centers on a creepy family who carries out a disturbing family tradition which leads to some nauseating images towards the finale. The film is essentially an exploration into fundamental religion mixed with in a throwback to the horror genre of a few decades back.

Watch the We Are What We Are featurette:

Jim Mickle loosely remakes Jorge Michel Grau’s 2010 horror flick, Somos lo Que Hay, with We Are What We Are, an American Gothic mutation of Grau’s well-received tale about a family of cannibals. More family drama than gore fest, Mickle’s film is driven by atmosphere and mystique, more concerned with creeping you out than making you hurl…until the abominable grand finale, that is.

The film opens in a small town outside of the Catskills, with Emma Parker (Kassie DePaiva), the matriarch of the cannibalistic Parker family, dying of a freak accident, leaving behind her husband, Frank (Bill Sage), teenage daughters Isis (Ambyr Childers, The Master) and Rose (Julia Garner, Martha Marcy May Marlene), and young son, Rory (Jack Gore) to carry out their creepy family traditions, the ambiguously religious origins of which are revealed in time. Mama Parker was responsible for preparing a ritualistic mortal gumbo for the family to chomp on, so now the burden of the slaughter falls on the shoulders of the eldest daughter, Isis. Papa Parker drags home a hapless victim for Isis to butcher, but she and Rose (constantly frazzled and paranoid) begin to buckle under the immense gravity of the task at hand when they discover that the poor soul they’re meant to mutilate is a girl from school.

Frank is a menacing man of few words, unpredictably snapping in bursts of rage, employing intimidation (both physical and psychological) to raise his children. Sage is eerily understated and an imposing force of nature, evoking a sense of tight-lipped dread–you’ll be on edge every second he’s on screen. Garner and Childers, both exceedingly talented for their age, put forth absolutely heartbreaking performances, though, to no fault of their own, their wholesome, Disney-kid good looks seem to sap the terror out of certain scenes, perhaps because their beauty distracts from the grisly atmosphere rather than juxtaposing it. Tarantino favorite Michael Parks is as dependable as ever, playing a good-hearted doctor who begins to catch on to the Parkers’ bloody history as he finds “clues” (i.e. human remains) floating down the flooded river, and his encounter with Mr. Parker when he finally puts the pieces together is the best scene of dialog in the film.

For the most part, Mickle uses the same quiet, lingering creepiness that pervades Martha Marcy May Marlene (much of his crew worked on that film, as well), allowing the stillness and ambiance of the moment to buzz in your ear a bit, needling at your nerves. Oddly, there are certain scenes that would have been elevated by this “silent treatment” (most notably the spectacularly gory ending), but instead have bizarrely melodramatic music plastered all over them, muffling the shocking immediacy of it all. In the films most egregious dip in artfulness, an inexplicable sex scene (it’s so out of the blue you’ll laugh) cartoonishly screeches to a halt with a splash of Platinum Dunes-style gore. Against the palpable, pitch black atmosphere Mickle and company create, the sequence feels a little silly, though the stumble doesn’t hurt the film all that much.

The Parker household–and the entire film, in fact–feels of another time, with candlelight flickering against the deep shadows of its corridors, contrasting brilliantly with the biblical rainstorms pouring outside the windows. There’s a not-so-subtle knock on fundamentalist religion that’s ever-present in the film, but the storytelling is effective whether you choose to digest it as a religious parable or not. Mickle and his crew deserve a lot of credit (especially cinematographer Ryan Samul) for exercising a great measure of finesse and deliberateness in crafting We Are What We Are, which could have easily become a throw-away jump-scare machine in less caring hands. Though the Salo-level gore of the final act doesn’t repulse so much as it confounds, the well-executed slow burn that leads us to it is worth the price of admission.

We Are What We Are trailer:

You might have seen movies about teenage pregnancy before, but you’ve never seen them done like this. In a refreshing take on the topic, Rebecca Thomas’ debut Electrick Children gives us a story of immaculate conception that is easy to love and wonderfully unique. Though it begins in a religious community, whether the pregnancy in question truly was immaculate conception or not is inconsequential; in a world of heightened possibility, we’re asked to suspend our disbelief in a far more uplifting manner than usual.

The film begins in a conservative Mormon colony in Utah, where 15 year old Rachel (Julia Garner) is interviewed about her faith by her pastor and father (Billy Zane). Rachel, who has never seen a tape recorder before, sneaks into the basement that night and finds herself listening to a blue tape, with a cover of The Nerves’ hit song “Hanging on the Telephone” recorded on it. The next thing we know, Rachel’s pregnant, and convinced that it was immaculate conception – that the holy spirit came to her through the man’s voice on the tape. Her mother, who caught Rachel and her brother Mr. Will (Liam Aiken) grappling over the tape on the floor that night, is not convinced, instead believing that Mr. Will forced himself on his sister. Mr. Will is exiled from the community, and an arranged marriage is organised for Rachel; but the young girl with a rebellious streak is convinced of her innocence and drives off in the night in hopes of finding the man on the tape, not realising that Mr. Will is asleep in the back of the truck.

And so, with her wide, curious eyes, we come to meet Las Vegas as though for the first time. A land of promise and electric paradise, it’s everything Rachel needs and more as she encounters a young group of skating stoner musicians, believing one of them to be the man on the tape. The contrast between her hometown in Utah, shot in nostalgic desaturated colour, and Vegas, with its neon lights and enchanting atmosphere, only serves to highlight the beauty of both, rather than display one as better than the other—and this consistent refusal to take the easy route of cutting down fundamentalist faith is what makes Thomas stand out even more as a director. There are plenty of comedic moments, as one would expect when two young traditionalist children are suddenly faced with the wasted youth of Sin City, but this humour never comes at the expense of Mormon culture.

As the story progresses, things do seem to be rather convenient, with one particular revelation seeming a little too felicitous for us to openly accept it, as the characters do. Though all of the characters are believable, they exist somewhere out of our reach, in a world of fantasy and exhilaration. Nevertheless, Rachel’s naivete is surprisingly believable, thanks both to her unwavering faith and to Julia Garner’s amazing performance. Garner is always naive without being stupid, and her big eyes and innocent face are more than perfect for the endless curiosity she portrays. The supporting cast are also fantastic, with a convincing Aiken as a boy newly discovering the pleasures of the world, and Rory Culkin’s surprisingly endearing performance as a forlorn runaway. With the intimate development of these characters and such genuinely unexpected turns throughout, it’s not hard for us to forgive any failures to fully reach its potential.

There have been many comparisons of this film to the 2011 drama Martha Marcy May Marlene, but though both films deal with fundamentalist religious communities in a way, the similarities end there. Electrick Children is far less condemning of such societies, instead rising above judgement to provide us with a film that is simply a tale of adolescent discovery wrapped in the warm glow of innocence. It lifts us up beyond issues of virtue and honour, into a sun-kissed kingdom so genuine it’s hard for us to be cynical. The story of a child growing up, it allows us to leave behind our own adulthood and the pessimism that comes with it, if only for a moment. Rachel tells us, “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.” But if I had to sum up this film in one word, that word would not be God, but beauty.

Electrick Children trailer:

Directed by Laura Thies, Surviving Family is an indie film about a dysfunctional family and the struggles of facing the truths behind its troubled past. Accompanying the film is the appropriate tagline, “You can’t escape the family tree.” However, the film bites off more than it can chew. Instead of relying more on what it did right, the family itself, it adds unnecessary elements along the way.

The beginning opens with what looks to be a typical birthday celebration as adolescent Terry Malone blows out her birthday candles on her cake. But things quickly shift from ordinary to horrifying. Her mother goes to find a knife to cut the cake but takes a considerable amount of time to do so. Meanwhile, at the table her younger brother reaches for his mother’s glass of alcohol. Not stopping him is his liquored up father who proceeds to make him drink it. When Terry goes to see what is taking her mother so long, she screams so loud that she can be heard from the other room.

The film then advances ahead as we see Terry (Sarah Wilson) as an adult with her fiancé Alex D’Amico (Billy Magnussen) coming back to New Jersey to break the news to her family about their marriage plans. They decide to surprise her sister for dinner and tell her the news. But little does she know the biggest surprise awaits her when she discovers she has a half-sister that no one told her about. It scene plays out just as awkward to the viewer as it would be in person because the acting felt a little off.

More flashbacks reveal how her mother killed herself as you start to get a feeling of how the family got so dysfunctional. Just as the beginning foreshadowed, Terry’s younger brother became an alcoholic and had several run-ins with the law. Her brother’s condition was the tipping point for her to move to Los Angeles where she ended up meeting Alex.

For the most part, the film works but only when her half-sister is not in the scene. When she is, the acting and dialog becomes way over-dramatic and the scene is ruined. There are enough flawed characters in the family to make the film interesting without having to add the half-sister bit in there.

The film does not leave any family member detail unexplained, almost has if it does not trust the viewer to do any amount of reading between the lines. Some people prefer this though, so they will enjoy the fact everything being spelled out to them. I felt like some of it was not needed though.

Surviving Family feels like a made for TV movie or a slightly more grown up daytime soap opera. Yet, at no point did I get an urge to abandon the film because it is one of those where you want to see how it turns out. I kept waiting for some big twist or event to happen but it plays out fairly straightforward.

Because the film was heavily based the screenwriter Mara Lesemann’s life, the film is pretty much an autobiography about her life. Which perhaps explains why it took a more straightforward approach and introduces more characters than it really needed (the half-sister and an old high school boyfriend) as they were likely inspired by her real-life events.

Ultimately, Surviving Family had more flaws than the flawed characters did in the film. It almost always felt a little off kilter whether it was the acting in a certain scene, lack of story arc or the unneeded characters that were brought in. The main focus of the film, the dysfunctional family, was done really well. It just needed to trim off some of the parts that did not work in order for it to be effective.