Subversive horror movie-making is that dark heart of cinema that is buried deep beneath the skin of audiences. From Louis Brunel and Salvador Dali’s Un Chien Andalou to recent Nicolas Winding Refn experimenta The Neon Demon, the weird and sickening have supplied a visceral exerpeince for audience on screen. Many audiences flock to them willingly, wishing to be transformed like the narratives on the big screen.
The greatest bewildering movies that stick with you have a massive reason for showing grim and shocking images: They have to have a point, serve a bigger purpose than merely to poke at your audiences gag reflexes or morals.
We Are The Flesh absolutely feels like it has none at all. And my eyes will not forgive me for watching it.
The film revolves around a post-apocalyptic world where two siblings come across a hermit living in his own refuge. There, he tangles them in his illicit and sickening life.
Reading over critic reviews, it seems that the movie’s ideologies may have flown over my head. Underneath the chaotic and extremely surreal energies that director Emiliano Rocha Minter have put together, you could argue a case for the emergence of animal instincts one society falls apart. The point that once dystopia becomes the main consumption of your psyche and your world is bent out of shape, your desires become deformed. Or at least they manifest in the worst way. So maybe it does have a point, but it sure as hell doesn’t feel like it during it.
Because We Are The Flesh batters you with the disturbing. Even with camera angles and shots, your whole viewing experience is completely battered to a sickening effect. Thrown into the mix, far beyond the profound cinematography and movie work are scenes of incest, death, nudity, rape, sexual violence, and, of course, necrophillia. I’m not saying that these cannot be portrayed in movies and I’m not even saying that they can’t all inhabit the same film. What I am saying is that presented here is a grimy narrative with a battering of unsettling moments that feel as though a horror fanatic threw them together for the sole purpose of being #edgy. Rocha Minter, excuse the pun, doesn’t seem to flesh out the story for complete reasoning of the visuals he uses. It just feels completely wrong.
Which, then again, as with most subversive movies, may be the point. Plus, without giving it away, I truly love the ending as much as I was perturbed by the whole essence of the film. Again, this may be the point. Oh my goodness, do I slightly like this film? I don’t even know any more, We Are The Flesh is squirming within me.
Imagine if Mad Max, Brazil, and Crash all had an orgy and birthed this sinister deformed baby called We Are The Flesh. If that sounds appealing to you then divulging into the pulpy bits of this film. For others, there is a lot of bad taste here that lingers upon your mouth. You’ll watch with caution or relish.
On an additional note: Watching before you go to bed will illicit the weirdest dreams you have ever had in your life. But not, I’m telling you, not as fucking bizarre as this film.
We Are The Flesh is out on DVD & Blu-Ray now!
