20 Sick Cannibal Movies You Need To See Before You Die

16. We Are What We Are

We Are What We Are are is definitely the most effective cannibal story to come out in the past few years, and it doesn't even involve teenagers lost in a jungle! Instead, Jim Mickle's film follows a family of cannibals consisting of a father and his two daughters. Their dad forces them to help butcher women he has kidnapped, and the entire family then eats the victim for dinner that evening. Meanwhile, over 30 people have gone missing in town over the past twenty years, and a sheriff gets on the family's trail when he discovers bone fragments in a nearby creek. So many of these cannibal movies are guilty pleasures, with the low production value you'd expect from a typical grindhouse film. We Are What We Are, on the opposite end of the spectrum, is masterfully crafted with beautiful cinematography and magnificent performances from Bill Sage, Julia Garner, Ambyr Childers and Michael Parks. The atmosphere Mickle creates is overwhelming and claustrophobic, and he consistently makes you feel trapped with this family in exactly the way the daughters are. This is a portrait of being closed in and questioning the values you were raised on, and so aside from all the gross cannibalism, We Are What We are just works as an effective drama, too.