We (original title Wij) is a film that is more drama than horror. However, due to what takes place in it there was an uncomfortable feeling watching this, I was both repulsed by the protagonists, and also drawn to see just how the story would all play out. This is in Dutch and Flemish, with English subtitles, and refreshingly the subtitles are actually decent (after a run of films I have seen recently that had dodgy ones). This was directed and written by Rene Eller, and was adapted by the book of the same name by author Elvis Peeters. It is also quite out there with what it decides to show on screen, and while it is mostly relevant to the subject matter I did think on a few occasions things got a bit gratuitous.
It is summer and eight teenage friends in a Belgian-Dutch border village are looking to have fun. What starts out as a series of seemingly harmless pranks eventually escalate into far more serious crimes, including prostitution, blackmail, assault and death. The movie is split into four chapters, each one dealing with a different character from the group, these include innocent looking Simon (Tijen Govaerts), Ruth (Maxime Jacobs), artistic Liesl (Pauline Castelyn), and aggressive Thomas (Aimé Claeys).
First off, and what I think has given this a bit of a controversial edge to it is the amount of nudity this film shows. All of the eight characters are naked on quite a few occasions, with full frontal nudity shown. There is even a scene early on that shows explicit sex scenes. Now sex is a big part of We's story and so its inclusion in some form is essential, however I really didn't think some moments of this were all that necessary, the explicit sex scene in particular could have been edited around rather than showing insert shots of genitalia. Being teens, and being into experimenting, all the friends routinely sleep with each other, the girls in particular seems to think it empowers them, and so the descent into selling their bodies for money is one the majority of them are more than happy to do. This fits in with the very nihilistic view the characters have. They see adults as worker ants, and do everything they can to rebel against law and order. This made it hard to like any of them, I found their actions to be very questionable, but then it isn't We's intention to give the viewer nice characters.
