We Are The Flesh, 2016.
Directed by Emiliano Rocha Minter.
Starring Noe Hernandez, Maria Evoli and Diego Gamaliel.
SYNOPSIS:
After wandering a ruined city for years in search of food and shelter, two siblings find their way into one of the last remaining buildings. Inside, they find a man who will make them a dangerous offer to survive the outside world.
Ugh.
Emiliano Rocha Minter’s debut We Are The Flesh (or Tenemos la Carne) is fucked up. Right from the bottom to the top. On one hand, it’s a perversely beautiful, unforgettable descent into the mouth of madness; on the other it’s deliberately provocative, pretentious and vague. However the pendulum swings, it’s hard to deny that We Are The Flesh has a huge amount of originality, style and thought provoking ideas (regardless of how ugly those ideas may be).
We’re flung into a post-apocalyptic vision of Mexico. Siblings Lucio and Fauna have for years been navigating the city for food and shelter. They happen on an older hermit residing in one of ruins, surviving by converting a mysterious liquid into a flammable gas. He offers to provide a home in exchange for a peculiar task, that they help him turn the building into a man-made ‘womb’, constructed solely with cardboard and duct tape. Their host slowly reveals the full extent of his insanity and dark philosophy; corrupting the two into living their most primal, taboo desires in this 80 minutes of existential horror.
Noe Hernandez’s hermit is exceptional, half William Defoe, half Doug Bradley’s Pinhead; a simultaneously terrifying and seductive catalyst for the psycho-sexual descent the trio are in. The elder teen siblings are obviously fully committed, being nude for a large swath of the run-time and engaging in numerous unpalatable acts not limited to incest, cannibalism, and fucking pretty much everything that moves. Minter employs techniques and infuses most scenes with beautiful and hypnotising cinematography.
It is deeply disturbing. A film this deliberately provocative, with this amount of damaging staying power will be as polarising as you’d except. It’s almost impossible to enjoy in the conventional sense unless you’re in possession of the darkest, demented sense of humour, regardless, there are some (extremely) guilty chuckles to be had, in between and during scenes that uncomfortably make you question you humanity, morality and overall sanity.
No doubt, behind its extremely icky surface is a powerful allegory for the everyday life of modern day city dwelling Mexican’s, I’ll confess to not having the full context to comment in a meaningful way. Regardless, right up in front though is ugly ideals, jet black comedy and cinematic viscera painted with a masters brush that all horror fans (and world cinema fans with thicker skins) need to see.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Mark Bartlett– Follow me on Twitter
Originally published November 15, 2016. Updated April 16, 2018.
