SOMOS LO QUE HAY [2010]

aka We Are What We Are

Mexican director Jorge Michel Grau crafts a grisly little film with Somos Lo Que Hay.  

After their crazed father dies, a family must continue the tradition of putting meat on the table...only they've grown up on a healthy diet of human flesh.  The film starts off fairly slow as we feel completely alienated from this bizarre group of characters but it all comes together in a tense final 30 minutes of horror where we learn maybe it was best we kept our distance from the family.  If you take the weirdness of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the awkward tension of Let The Right One In then place it all in the slums of Mexico then you might get an idea of what this is.  

3 coroners from Cronos out of 5

THE ABC'S OF DEATH [2013]

The ABC's Of Death is a collection of short segments by a variety of genre directors & film mediums from all over the world, including Ti West, Angela Bettis, Xavier Gens, Jake West, Adam Wingard & more.

Each segment is assigned a letter of the alphabet that features a death that must relate to it.  In a way it reminded me of the teaser intros to Six Feet Under, as I tried to guess how each death was going to play out in the often bizarre scenario. The quality of each segment ranges from great to terrible but never really seems to hurt the sickening enjoyment of it all.  They're wildly funny, immensely disturbing and sometimes excruciatingly disgusting.  It's not high art but packs in enough squeamish laughter to please horror film nuts for an evening.

2½ letter blocks in blood out of 5