IFC Films and Shudder have made a new scary movie called CONSECRATION. A good place to start for any genre movie, as this usually means a high standard. Another good thing about the movie is that Jena Malone is in it. She does a good job in this one.
Even though it has a religious theme, it is a new take on this type of horror movie. In other words, this isn't just another movie about an exorcism, but it does get very violent and creepy. Also, the story works really well, and the 90 minutes are used perfectly.
Read on for our full review of the movie Consecration. From February 10, 2023, you can see the movie in theatres (and on Shudder later).
What is right or wrong?
Good and evil are at the heart of the story, which has a religious theme. Or God and Satan. And while Grace (Jena Malone), an accomplished ophthalmologist in London, has avoided religion and focused on science, her brother has gone in the opposite direction. He works as a priest in the Scottish Highlands at the Mount Saviour Convent.
Their different reasons for avoiding (or going towards) religion have to do with their childhoods, which we will see in flashbacks that work very well.
In any case, her brother's suspicious death forces Grace to go to the remote Scottish convent. Officially, it's a case of murder-suicide, and Grace refuses to believe that her brother killed himself. At the convent, she meets Mother Superior (Janet Suzman, who has been nominated for an Academy Award) and Father Romero (Danny Huston).
She doesn't trust either of them because it's clear that they care more about the Church than the truth. She has no faith at all in the Church, so she starts her own investigation. One that leads her to find out about murder, breaking the rules of religion, and a disturbing truth about herself.
Still, there are many ways in which the main question of what (or who) is good or bad remains hard to answer. In that area, the world is more grey than black or white.
Jena Malone, who was in The Hunger Games and Swallowed, does a great job as Grace, so you could watch it just for her. But no one in the movie gives a bad performance, so you should enjoy the whole cast. Steffan Cennydd plays her brother, who we only get to see alive in flashbacks (The Feast).
The intense end of the Consecration
As was already said, Consecration is just the right length at 1 hour and 30 minutes. And even though the whole movie is interesting and sometimes surprising, it was the ending that really won me over.
To be fair, this usually happens. If a movie ends badly, it ruins the whole experience of watching it. They Wait in the Dark was like this (though I do still recommend watching it). So it was great to have the exact opposite happen here.
Near the end, there are a lot of twists and turns that only make sense if you've been paying attention. If you're in a movie theatre, you won't have to worry about that, but if you're at home, you should respect the story and pay attention to the movie.
It has a few parts that reminded me of The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix, which is one of my all-time favourite TV shows. If you watched this one and could follow how the story went, you can also follow this one.
You can see Consecration in theatres right now and later on Shudder.
Christopher Smith wrote and directed the movie Consecration, which he also co-wrote. You have probably seen some of his other movies before. Christopher Smith's first movie as a director was the horror film Creep (2004), which came out in 2004. Since then, he has made movies like Severance (2006), Triangle (2009), Black Death (2010), Detour (2016), and The Banishing (2017). (2020).
Laurie Cook helped him write this latest horror movie, which is about religion. Laurie Cook has been making movies for about ten years, but this is her first piece of writing. She also worked as a producer on Smith's The Banishing and the movie Barbarians, which will come out in 2021.
Consecration is distributed by both IFC Films and Shudder. This means that it will be shown in theatres first, and then it will be available to stream on Shudder. If you can, go see it in a theatre first if you can. If not, you'll be happy to hear that it also works very well in a home theatre, which is how I saw it.
If Heaven of Horror had half stars, I would give Consecration 312 stars. We don't, though, so I'll give it a solid 3.
Beginning on February 10, 2023, Consecration will only be shown in theatres. It will come out later on Shudder.
Details
Christopher Smith is the director.
Christopher Smith and Laurie Cook are the authors.
Jena Malone, Danny Huston, Janet Suzman, Thoren Ferguson, Will Keen, Steffan Cennydd, Eilidh Fisher, Victoria Donovan, and Ian Pirie are in the cast.
Summary
In CONSECRATION, Grace (Jena Malone) goes to the Mount Saviour Convent in Scotland to find out what happened after her brother, a priest, died under mysterious circumstances. Once she gets there, she finds out about a murder, an act of sacrilege, and a shocking truth about her own past.
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