Happy Meals

Title
Happy Meals

Genre
Horror, Dark Comedy

Format
85 minute feature film

Target audience
For cinema exhibition, 17–30 year olds. For online distribution, 15–30 year olds. For television, 20–45 year olds. Both male and female audiences.

Tag-line
If you can’t deport them, eat them.

Logline
Locked in a Hamburger Restaurant seven exploited Mexicans must survive the night while being hunted by a horde of Americans turned into flesh-eating cannibals.

Synopsis
An isolated burger restaurant located in Texas and frequented by Caucasian Americans is operated completely by seven undocumented Mexican immigrants who are exploited by its owner, a horrible and unscrupulous man. One night, when the owner argues with his workers, he falls down, hits his head and accidentally dies in front of them. The Mexicans, terrified, not knowing what to do, with a shortage of hamburger meat for the next day and with old machinery at hand decide to disappear their boss’s body by making hamburger patties out of it. The next day regular clients unknowingly eat the human meat, they get excited about it and order non-stop. But they begin to take on primitive attitudes. They lose all humanity, they refuse to leave the restaurant, they keep on eating and they become aggressive. Once the human burger meat is finished the Americans attack the Mexican workers to eat them. A terrifying siege begins in which the immigrants will use their humor to survive the bloody situation.

Visual realization
The narrative will be inspired by film noir, beginning with a very naturalistic, warm and pleasant style to then take on a dark, contrasted and delirious aesthetic that radiates the peril and claustrophobia endured by the Mexicans. The characters and their cultures will be defined by their exaggerated traits – thus representing common social situations inside the small universe of a hamburger restaurant – through an irreverent, surrealist and intimate style similar to that of Brazil (UK, 1985) and Old Boy (South Korea, 2003). It tends towards the unreal but with a strong sense of realism and tragedy, always maintaining tension between what’s ironic and comical and what’s devastating.

Statement of Intent
Happy Meals makes a sharp analogy of race dynamics between Hispanics and Caucasian Americans in the United States to provide a deep satire of every-day issues faced by Latino workers, thus cleverly exposing current and important social issues.

Audience appeal
This film is aimed mainly at Latinos, who constitute one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the United States, comprising 17% of the population and over 20% of the key 18–34 marketing demographic. According to the Motion Picture Association of America, they also go to the movies more than any other ethnic group: about 6.4 times a year. Dark comedy and horror film audiences are also important, as they tend to be eager for new movies coming from this genre, which also translates well internationally.

Contact
Balam Herrera, Director, Mexico City. balamh@gmail.com
+52 1 5534592632