CONSUMED Review: A Walk in the Woods Goes Wrong in More Ways Than One

Beth (Courtney Halverson) and Jay (Mark Famiglietti) want to celebrate a one-year anniversary of Beth’s cancer remission. Apparently, neither of them is acquainted with horror classics, so they decide to go on a camping trip to the woods.

Everyone familiar with the genre can easily imagine about a dozen different scenarios of how things might go wrong, and here Consumed offers its biggest (honestly - its only) surprise by introducing two menaces at once. First, Beth makes a gruesome discovery in the woods (valuable piece of advice from horror fans number one: upon finding, seeing or hearing something disturbing – run), and soon a skin stealing creature attacks the couple.

Then, they are saved by a brooding, silent man (Devon Sawa) with a rifle. Valuable piece of advice from horror fans number two: upon encountering a seemingly unstable person in the middle of nowhere don’t just assume they have good intentions. Run.

Mitchell Altieri’s Consumed is one of those films you can’t help but be intrigued with. It starts like a high-concept creature movie, a weird cross between Predator and, say, The Babadook, where the fight for survival against a sinister, flesh-eating monster is rhymed with a fight for survival against a sinister, flesh-eating monster known as cancer.

Altieri also follows the trajectory of many post-horror flicks, hinting at the exploration of a relationship in trouble. Beth and Jay may not have completely lost connection amidst everything else going on in their lives, but they are definitely headed in that general direction. So, the premise is ambitious, and the movie is supposed to tackle some serious issues while Courtney Halverson kicks some monstrous and psychotic ass – but then, it just falls apart.

Most of the troubles here start with the script. Once the villains are introduced, the authors lose all interest in Jay and reduce him to a plot device for Beth’s further actions - thus, robbing themselves of half the conflict and a true emotional impact. The story then gets repetitive, reiterating the same point it’s trying to make over and over again. It doesn’t help that the limited cast is saddled with a lot of expository and clunky dialogue.

Devon Sawa, who is currently having a sort of a comeback, does solid work to come off as genuinely unhinged but the screenplay also has him pulling textbook villainy moves such as calling Beth a “curious little girl”. Courtney Halverson - also not a novice in the genre - does her best as the lead, but the collective actors’ effort is just not enough when the writing (penned by David Calbert) tries to do too many things at once, and doesn’t do them very well.

The direction by Mitchell Altieri isn’t the most creative too, as he battles against the obviously low budget and resorts to showing a lot of things in the dark. Unfortunately, these efforts don’t help Consumed succeed as a horror or a thriller; it remains spectacularly unscary throughout and doesn’t dare to do anything any other creature film hasn’t done before.

Going full-on crazy saved a lot of humbled features in the past, and Altieri’s film has all the right preconditions for it – but that doesn’t happen. This movie remains so serious it actually doesn’t have a single joke or a moment of humor – it might be some kind of a record. To put it in perspective: in the crash course of “the films that would scare you off ever going camping” Beth and Jay obviously needed to take, Consumed just wouldn’t make the cut.

The film is now available to buy or rent.