'We Are What We Are' review: a religious nightmare

[rug]

Ambyr Childers (top), Julia Garner and Jack Gore play the children of a strict, God-fearing patriarch in Jim Mickle's creepy "We Are What We Are." Photo: Entertainment One

Horror. Directed by Jim Mickle. With Bill Sage, Ambyr Childers, Julia Garner, Michael Parks, Jack Gore. (Rated R. 105 minutes.)

Walter Addiego
Published 5:19 pm, Thursday, October 3, 2013

There's much to savor in Jim Mickle's "We Are What We Are," a horror film about a kind of religious fanaticism that's gone way off the rails. The movie saves most of its modest number of jolts for its last quarter or so, which makes them all the more intense. They stick in your craw - and be warned, they're not for the squeamish.

Something's off about the Parker family, who live in a depressed part of the Catskills under the strict reign of God-fearing, bearded patriarch Frank (Bill Sage). Teenage daughters Iris (Ambyr Childers) and Rose (Julia Garner) have the ethereal look of 19th century portrait paintings. Their young brother, Rory (Jack Gore), seems perpetually hungry.

As the film opens, their mother abruptly collapses and dies of an unspecified illness during an errand in town. Despite his grief, Frank insists that the family continue its annual preparations for a ritual that involves several days of fasting. The event is called Lamb's Day, and we see in flashbacks its origins in dire circumstances involving the family's 18th century forebears.

The girls, who are really the film's focus, carry out their extremely unpleasant duties with great reluctance. Meanwhile, the local doctor (Michael Parks) has done an autopsy on Mrs. Parker, with a disturbing finding. We learn that years earlier, the doctor's daughter disappeared.

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