We Are What We Are

I have a hard time finding decent horror movies these days. It gets discouraging, having to go through so many terrible films with horrid acting, bad cinematography, and cliched plots. Even the ones that are done right tend to be predictable.

Take the movie my wife and I watched the other night, We Are What We Are, the 2013 remake of a Mexican horror film released in America under the same name in 2010. The micro synopsis on Netflix said it was a film about a cannibal family struggling to hold onto their bizarre traditions. Right there they gave the first three quarters of the movie away. Before we started watching, we knew they were cannibals, yet the plot was designed to keep that important point a mystery, as if the viewer would be shocked when they discovered the family were indeed cannibals.

That bugged me. A lot. This film is a slow burn. The actors were great, particularly Bill Sage, who played the father, and his two daughters, played by Julia Garner and Ambyr Childers. I was drawn into the film by the performances. Mediocre acting would have been this film's demise, that's for sure. I mean they gave away a huge element of the plot before the damn thing started.

So, after slogging through a film that went exactly where I thought it was going to go, we were rewarded with a tense and brilliant ending. All of the elements of the first three quarters of the film came together, and it suddenly didn't matter that you began to feel that maybe you wasted an hour of your life watching a movie go nowhere. Oh, it went somewhere, and I was left thinking to myself, "What the fuck just happened?" The movie began with a match to a fuse that slowly inched its way toward what would prove to be a hell of an explosive end.

If you have Netflix, give We Are What We Are a shot. If you feel like the film is dragging, well, it is, but stick with it. The end is worth the wait.

Happy nightmares, fiends!

Mother's Day (2010)

Just saw this flick last night. Back in 2009 or so when I heard they were remaking the goofy classic I was a bit off put, as I usually am when it comes to remakes. They're rarely any good, usually quite shitty, and often a complete waste of time. Like the remake of such similarly themed classics as Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, and Last House on the Left, my guess is that the producers wanted to bring this story to a generation that may not have rented Mother's Day at their local video store that way I did when I was a youngin. Of the aforementioned films (all of which I am a huge fan of the originals), Mother's Day was probably my least favorite. I always liked that film, but it is pretty kitschy.

Going into the 2010 version of Mother's Day I was a apprehensive. I think we missed the first five or ten minutes (we certainly missed the credits sequence) so I was already confused since the story didn't really match the story in the original about three girls going on a annual trip and being ambushed in the woods. No, it wasn't anything like that, and the story was better for it. In fact their were so many changes that, at first, I thought they'd have been better off making it an original film, but as I watched and became engrossed in this brutal horror film I realized that, for a change, this one was spot on.

The plot was not only updated, but more believable and intense than the original, which was off-key and even silly at times, more of a black-comedy-horror. That they took the idea of a mother who rules her psycho family with an iron fist and made it into a terrifying and violent horror film was brilliant. This is what I want to see in a remake. It didn't feel like they were remaking the film just to cash in on the name (I mean can you really cash in on a cult film title like Mother's Day? Don't think so.) In the world of remakes and do-overs, this one was not only justified (unlike such terrible remakes as Psycho, the Haunting, and A Nightmare on Elm Street, all of which should have been left the fuck alone), but done quite well. Yes, I like the original, but just a day after watching this psychotic display of brutality, I want to watch it again. Coming from me, that's a pretty big compliment for any horror film this day in age, much less a remake. I'm very opinionated and not a big fan of modern horror film, preferring more classic horror films of the early eighties and older (not that there weren't great horror films in the 90's or 00', but they're getting worse as time goes on).

I highly recommend this to any fan of horror and even fans of the original. I give it a solid 5/5 stars.