CONSUMED (2024)

New On Demand from Brainstorm Media!
Directed by Mitchell Altieri.
Written by David Calbert.
Starring Devon Sawa, Courtney Halverson, Mark Famiglietti
Check out the trailer here!!

After her cancer goes into remission, Beth and her husband Jay (Courtney Halverson and Mark Famiglietti) decide to celebrate with a wilderness hike. Deep into the forest, they find themselves being followed by a mysterious creature in the woods. When Jay is wounded, it’s up to Beth and a wandering hunter named Quinn (Devon Sawa) to use every bit of their forest know-how to escape the invisible beast that Quinn believes is the mythic Wendigo.

I really, really, really wanted to like CONSUMED. I love man versus nature flicks and the trailer of CONSUMED suggested this was going to be something special. And the film tries hard to get you to care about its characters. The fact that Beth is a cancer survivor really makes for a compelling detail about the character and for a good while I was into her plight. Jay tries to allow her to do things for herself, but also is very protective of her. It’s clear that the couple have fought about Jay treating Beth like she is helpless and the actors do a good job of feeling like a real couple.
Devon Sawa tries to play the same grizzled hunter he was in the truly excellent and superior film HUNTER HUNTER, but just can’t sell it here. Here he is more of a paranoid loner, driven mad by too much time alone in the woods and too much rage fueling that isolation. Still there just isn’t anything for the actor to do other than serve as an extra person for the monster to attack. Just see HUNTER HUNTER for a much more interesting, though similar role for Sawa.

But what really turned me off of this movie, which is by the Butcher Brothers who also did HOLY GHOST PEOPLE, THE HAMILTONS, and THE VIOLENT KIND—all solid films, is that it completely goes off the rails in the last act. I get it. You want to end big. But things go cosmic at the end and any logic is just tossed out the window. This creature that is stalking the actors of this one becomes extremely vague, almost an ethereal mess of overdone CG. All momentum made with the monster stalking them through the woods is lost when the monster is unveiled. It becomes way too powerful to be contained in a tangible form and is defeated simply through the strength of will of Beth. I get it. They were going for a more metaphysical ending, but since the first two thirds of the film is so grounded in the wilderness, the ethereal stuff feels completely off tone.

It’s too bad. I think the Butcher Brothers are talented filmmakers. I think they tried too hard for a gonzo ending and sadly, CONSUMED misses the mark.