This review was made possible by an early screener of Consumed. Consumed releases in Theaters and On Demand August 16th, 2024.

Consumed is directed by Mitchell Altieri and written by David Calbert. Trapped between a madman (Devon Sawa) seeking revenge and a skin-stealing monster, a married couple must find the strength to fight and make it out of the woods alive.

I enjoy a good horror flick set in the woods. Whether the peril is natural or supernatural, the woods represents a great location for terror. We’re not familiar with them, it’s easy to get lost, cell phones don’t typically work well… there’s a lot to get creeped out about!

The new horror offering, Consumed, sees a married couple hiking through a forest and up some mountains as a celebration of Beth’s (Courtney Halverson) anniversary of being cancer-free. Unfortunately, what should be a celebratory occurrence soon turns dark when the two are set upon by a strange creature.

With Jay (Mark Famiglietti) breaking his leg, the duo is saved by Quinn, a mountain man with an underground bunker. But is he any better than what they face outside of his lair?

TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS

+ The early characterization set up is handled with decent subtlety, and it builds the characters through their actions and words so that five minutes into the movie, you already feel like you know who Beth and Jay are and how the dynamic between them works.

Well before it is established that Beth is a cancer survivor, you already know something is “off” about her on a medical level. Jay treats her as if she is very fragile, taking items out of her backpack and adding them to his own, and he is constantly offering her a hand or to carry her bag when she seems to be struggling.

These actions also show Jay as overprotective and uncertain of Beth’s capabilities. And, in turn, Beth’s reactions to these actions show that she is not best pleased with the kid gloves with which he is treating her. She insists she can do everything herself, and there is an undercurrent of resentment when Jay tries to assist her.

That’s a lot of heavy lifting for this movie’s first several moments, and Consumed handles it like it’s nothing. Quite well managed!

+ Devon Sawa takes a while before he finds his way into the movie, but it is well worth the wait, as he takes full advantage of every minute of screen time he is offered. Despite the synopsis of the movie branding his character a “madman”, Sawa’s performance is nuanced enough that you are never sure whether or not Jay and Beth can trust Quinn.

Every time it seems established that he is either friend or foe, he will pivot in the other direction. Is he helping them against the monstrous threat? Then why is he being so distant and cold to them? Is he a danger in his own right? Then why does he end up opening up to Beth about his daughter? Quinn is a very layered character, and Sawa plays him with a proper amount of dignity and respect. He definitely has the strongest performance of the film. 

– I was frequently not a particularly big fan of the editing of Consumed, both on a technical level and based on some distinct editing choices they made. There are scenes that aren’t put together amazingly well, and there are others where it feels like the film is trying to be trickier or cutesier than it needs to be.

As an example of the former, there is a moment where Jay runs into a tree. It’s not much, but it’s spliced together awkwardly, and it left me wondering more about how that edit got left in the film than whether or not Jay was okay. As a reference to the editing choices I did not love, there is a scene late where Beth is being dragged away by the beast. The moment flickers between her being dragged and a quick black screen. It’s a distracting choice that again took me out of the instant and left me pondering what I was supposed to be getting out of that as a viewer. She doesn’t seem to be fading in and out of consciousness, so why the flashes?

So while plenty of Consumed is directed and written with a deft touch, there were just bits here-and-there that left me more perplexed than caught up.

– The monster of the movie–purported to be a wendigo, but without any of the typical trappings of being someone who has consumed human flesh–is a bit too magical for my tastes. I’d prefer something a little more beastly and down-to-earth. Even if it were something of a shapeshifter, that would be fine. But what we get here instead is this zipping and flying about black cloud monster who can open weird portals in thin air and… kind of hypnotizes people, I guess?

I’m all for being reminded of Friday The 13th movies, but this reminded me of the worst aspect of the worst one. And I never need that. 

So this one I feel bad about because it’s basically my saying that this entire choice of the screenwriters and the director for the film’s core antagonist did not work for me, but… yeah, that’s all true. It didn’t. I’ve seen wendigo done right, and this was not it. 

OVERALL

Consumed certainly has its merits. The acting is pretty solid across the board, topped off by a strong job from Devon Sawa. The screenwriting establishes the characters with aplomb and makes them all feel wholly realized and flesh-and-blood real. Unfortunately, the movie made several choices that just did not resonate with me, and they left me feeling let down when everything else seemed so strong. Beth’s nightmares/visions started off creepy and powerful, but just got tedious after the umpteenth time seeing them. So while this wasn’t bad, it wasn’t that great, either. 

2.5 out of 5