We Are What We Are (2013)

Boring...sums up the majority of this film. Set in a remote small town outside of the Catskill Mountains, the film centers on the Parkers, a fairly reclusive but otherwise normal-seeming family that, every year participate in a grizzly religious ceremony which has been a family tradition for centuries, and must be performed by the mother of the family.

The film opens with the death of the mother, leaving it up to the eldest daughter to perform the ceremony.  Still reeling from his wife death, Frank, the domineering father, kidnaps a young girl and imprisons her in the basement of the Parkers house in preparation for the ceremony.

The two teenage daughters in the family, Rose and Iris, are not so enthusiastic about their new responsibilities. Unbeknown to the Parkers, the locals are beginning to suspect them, especially the local Doctor (Micheal Parks) whose daughter disappeared with out a trace only days earlier.

The film has a style all its own - dark, gothic, macabre and unsettling; just a bit too slow paced for my liking. Which is a shame because the film had the makings of a cannibal classic like Ravenous - which is the only film I can compare it to in terms of style and plot.

The film culminates in a frenzy of cannibalism and stomach-churning gore, with an amazing scene which ranks amongst the best I've seen, in either a zombie or any other type of horror film. The ending however, doesn't make up for the slow paced, uneven, and at times tedious eighty minutes that precede it.