Creature Feature Is Big on Gore but Little More
The Butcher Brothers bring us a gory woodland creature feature with Consumed, but it can’t create enough tension to be memorable for much else.
Getting lost in the woods is an age-old horror movie trick, and there have been more than enough examples over the years of how much variance you can have with the concept. From The Blair Witch Project to Evil Dead II and beyond, the woods hold a dangerous allure based on the raw ancient power of nature. Throw the supernatural in there and it can be a great template for nightmare fuel.
Mitchell Altieri and David Calbert, aka The Butcher Brothers, reunite for a stab at just that with Consumed. Their penchant for creating effective low-budget horror movies puts them in good stead for it, and the setup is simple yet intriguing enough to show great promise.
Married couple Jay (Mark Famiglietti – Premonition, Terminator 3, Bionicle: The Legend Reborn) and Beth (Courtney Halverson – Unfriended, Keith) used to be avid travelers. Beth’s cancer diagnosis changed that, but now she’s in remission, they decide to go on a celebratory camping trip. There’s natural love and tension between them as Jay struggles to let Beth be independent again, and tempers end up flaring over the strife of the past year or so.
But Beth is troubled by strange visions, and something is watching the couple out in the forest. It turns out it’s a skin-stealing monster, intent on adding theirs to its fly-addled pile. When it finally confronts them, they’re saved by a grizzled hunter (Devon Sawa – Final Destination, Chucky), but they soon learn that his time out here has left him in a less-than-stable state. So the couple find themselves caught between two wild monsters, and their odds of survival are dwindling with every moment spent in the wilderness.
The initial friction between Jay and Beth is compelling, and I’ve certainly seen far worse attempts to use illness as a story dynamic in this genre. I’m not sure it really matters much by the end, but it does help set things up well.
The practical effects are pretty good here. In certain scenes, gnarly-looking dead bodies, creature design, and eviscerations give Consumed a grungy, decaying vibe. The CG effects are more hit-and-miss, and they let down the good work done on the practical side on more than one occasion.
The strengths are there, and the performances are generally okay, but there’s a real lack of peril to many encounters with the monster, especially when it’s in its smoke form. I can understand the need to be mindful of showing too much of the creature’s true form; in that regard, it does work for the reveal. But the smoke trail representing it for most of the runtime is unthreatening and undermines the set pieces it appears in.
The team do such a good job of making this feel like a bigger film than it is at points, and the unfortunate side effect of that is problems like this make it seem cheap in an unflattering way. With a lingering lack of danger, the middle of the movie falls apart, and despite Devon Sawa’s fun turn as a seriously troubled hunter, it’s a bit of a struggle to get to the conclusion.
Things do at least get better in the finale. It’s somewhat predictable, and again, there are clashes between practical and CG work that scar it, but the doomy climax delivers a bleak yet satisfying outcome.
Consumed is a patchy woodland horror movie that can’t quite find the right balance for what it wants to be. The crucial issue is that it lacks a sense of tension and threat during its middle portion, making its smaller failings a bit harder to stomach.
SCORE: 5/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 5 equates to “Mediocre.” The positives and negatives wind up negating each other, making it a wash.
Consumed screener provided for review.
Consumed has a limited theatrical and digital release on August 16, 2024.
