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One Movie Punch


Mar 20, 2018

Today’s movie is “Are We Not Cats?” (2018), written and directed by Xander Robin, a feature-length treatment of his short by the same name. The film follows Eli (Michael Patrick Nicholson), recently unemployed and homeless, who meets Anya (Chelsea Lopez) at a sludge metal show. The two share a habit of plucking and eating their own hair, which leads to some extremely surreal territory.

This movie is weird, almost a full-on concept film. Eli and Anya are written and directed to act like anthropomorphized cats, and not just because they eat their own hair. Both characters exude that rare combination of aloofness, focus and deadly seriousness found in both domesticated and stray cats, not just how they express themselves, but also how they interact with other people.

The practical effects are a huge strength of this film. The sets are great, especially Eli’s truck and Anya’s place, particularly her light machine activated by a record player. The makeup is great and the costumes are well chosen. The music is well suited for transitions and also integrated into the story. All these factors combine with a strange script and good performances to pull off a unique film. It shouldn’t work, but it did for me.

The film is pretty short, however, coming in at one hour and sixteen minutes, so my one criticism is how fast everything moves, especially the final act when we learn what happens when people eat human hair. In some ways, it fits the whole cat motif, but in other ways, it feels like a checklist of scenes that could have been expanded, especially with such strangely endearing characters.

“Are We Not Cats?” (2018) is really weird, but has its own strange charm. Maybe it’s the cat person in me, but I was captivated watching the film unfold. It has rough edges, but I think that only adds to its charm. But I’ll warn everyone right now, it can and does get graphic, and it can and does get weird. If you can handle that, then you might just find the same charm that I did.

Rotten Tomatoes: 91%

Metacritic: 68

One Movie Punch: 8.0/10

“Are We Not Cats?“ (2018) is not rated and is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.