CONSECRATION (2023)

Studio:     Shudder/IFC Films
Director:    Christopher Smith
Writer:     Christopher Smith, Laurie Cook
Producer:  Laurie Cook, Jason Newmark, Casey Herbert, Xavier Marchand, Stuart Ford
Stars:     Jena Malone, Danny Huston, Thoren Ferguson, Will Keen, Eilidh Fisher, Alexandra Lewis, Jolade Obasola, Daisy Allen, Kit Rakusen, Ian Pirie, Steffan Cennydd, Janet Suzman

Review Score:

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Summary:

An investigation into her brother’s death at a remote Scottish convent unlocks shocking memories for a woman with a haunted past.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Grace Farlo, a reclusive ophthalmologist with missing memories who also suffers from haunting visions, receives a phone call from DCI Harris in Scotland. Grace learns that her brother Michael, a priest at the remote Mount Saviour Convent, was found dead in an apparent murder-suicide.

After Grace arrives to personally investigate the matter, Harris elaborates that Michael is believed to have murdered another priest, Father Carol, before jumping to his death on rocks above the nearby sea. Harris additionally informs Grace that this particular church is unusually dedicated to combating demonology and that one of its nuns, Sister Beth, even cut out her own eye after claiming to have seen the devil. The convent’s Mother Superior also tells Grace that a demon killed Father Carol and drove Michael to suicide.

Grace faints from a vision of Michael’s ghost while examining his body in the morgue. Upon waking in a hospital, Grace briefly meets Father Romero, who was supposedly sent by the Vatican to re-consecrate the convent.

After mentioning to Father Romero that her father was imprisoned for killing her and Michael’s mother, Grace dreams of armored crusaders on horseback breaking up an apparent occult gathering. Grace also dreams of nuns jumping to their death on the same rocks where Michael died, after which Grace wakes to find herself back at the convent oddly dressed in white robes.

Grace confronts Mother Superior about hiding the truth regarding her brother’s death. Mother Superior merely responds that she knows about Grace’s visions, and later claims they are actually memories from her past as well as from her future.

Father Romero explains to Grace that the church dates back to the 12th century, when The Knights of the Morning Star founded it to safeguard religious artifacts. Romero gives Grace a box of Michael’s belongings, which include a coded journal where Michael wrote about Grace being “special” due to her visions.

A flashback reveals that Grace’s father kept her, Michael, and their mother locked in dog cages. When they tried to escape, Grace’s father stabbed their mother to death before an invisible presence prevented him from killing Grace too.

Grace subsequently recalls that Mount Saviour Convent tried to adopt her and Michael as orphans. Although she believes that is why Michael became a priest at that specific church, Father Romero tells her that Michael was actually interested in a missing relic that sank into the sea following an earthquake.

Another recovered memory confirms that when she and Michael were children, Father Jacobs and Sister Dianne from the convent did indeed try to adopt them. However, when the priest and the nun left Michael by the side of the road and became aggressive with Grace, an invisible presence caused their car to crash.

Another vision reveals that Father Carol led the nuns in torturing Grace’s brother as he refused to help them recover the relic. One nun, Sister Matilda, unexpectedly confronts Grace with a knife. Inexplicably, an invisible presence then seemingly compels Sister Matilda to stab herself to death.

DCI Harris takes both Mother Superior and Grace into custody to question them further about the strange deaths at the convent. Grace tries telling him that the convent was using her brother to find a missing relic, and now they want to use her.

Father Romero and the nuns concoct a cover story that forces Harris to release Grace. Meanwhile, Mother Superior tells Harris that Grace, not an object, is the missing relic.

Grace visits her father in prison. Grace’s father reveals that he took her in after finding her wandering a beach alone at age 10. However, he soon came to believe she was Satan’s child because death and destruction always followed her. Grace’s father additionally claims that she conjured an evil entity on the night he killed her mother. Grace abruptly leaves when her father starts banging his head on protective glass in a fit.

Upon returning to the convent, Sister Beth tries to stab Grace, but she too is driven by an invisible presence to kill herself instead. Sister Meg, whom Grace previously befriended, flees in fright. Grace follows her, only to witness Sister Meg slitting her wrists exactly like she did in a vision Grace had earlier.

Grace finds Father Romero and the remaining nuns performing a consecration rite in the chapel. Now convinced she is cursed, Grace asks Romero to help cleanse her. Romero sends Grace down into a subterranean crypt. However, when he then tries to suddenly seal her inside, the invisible presence kills him. With his dying words, Romero reveals Grace is a centuries-old fallen angel whose darkness is a threat to Christ.

DCI Harris arrives at the convent in time to see Grace allowing herself to fall on the rocks like her brother in a suicide attempt. While falling, flashbacks show Grace that an unseen doppelganger has been her lifelong “guardian angel” who killed anyone that threatened to harm her, including Michael.

DCI Harris questions Mother Superior about what really happened regarding Grace and the unexplained deaths. Since her body wasn’t recovered, Mother Superior warns that Grace will use her incredible power for evil until she is stopped.

Back to her everyday life, Grace has lunch with her colleague, Dr. John Holmes. John reveals that Valerie To, an elderly patient Grace previously referred to him for failing eyesight, miraculously healed. A flashback shows Grace’s doppelganger placing her hands on Valerie after she left Grace’s office.

Mother Superior unexpectedly confronts Grace in the street at gunpoint. Before Mother Superior can shoot, a car suddenly runs into her. Grace reflects on her “guardian angel.”

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Review:

Although “Faith” would have yielded similarly clichéd results, “Consecration” must be the umpteenth film steeped in Christian-based horrors to feature a woman conveniently named “Grace.”  Devoutly religious parents in the movies apparently never name their daughters Britney or Gladys, I guess.  Less stereotypically, this particular protagonist is a reclusive ophthalmologist who, likely due to a mistake made by whomever typed it into an onscreen email address, can’t seem to correctly spell her own profession.

Following a flash-forward cold open where a nun shockingly confronts Grace at gunpoint, “Consecration” holds that thought to backtrack for the decidedly less exciting events of Grace administering an eye exam to an elderly patient, conferring with a colleague, then returning to her average apartment to take a phone call.  On the other end of the line, investigating officer Harris informs Grace that her brother Michael, a priest at a remote Scottish church, was found dead in an apparent murder-suicide involving a second priest, and Michael was on the suicide end of that hyphen.

Grace can’t believe her brother would kill himself, much less murder another man of the cloth, so she heads to the isolated island location to perform her own amateur investigation into Michael’s death.  There, she meets the stern (is there any other kind of chief nun in the movies?) Mother Superior who will presumably pull a pistol on her at some point, the outwardly kind but conspicuously cagey (is there any other kind of chief priest in the movies?) Father Romero, and a variety pack of meekly subservient (is there any other kind of capital-S Sister in the movies?) nuns with varying degrees of narrative importance, all of which are still very low.  After a frightening vision causes her to faint, this motley crew quickly houses Grace, clothes her, and allows her to wander the grounds unsupervised, just as all cloistered convents commonly do when an outsider suspects them of skullduggery in a fatal game of armchair detective.

Throughout “Consecration’s” earlier scenes, Grace regularly experiences haunting hallucinations that tease crusading 12th-century Templars, ancient occult rituals, and a hazy family history pockmarked by multiple instances of madness and murder.  On top of those traumas, Grace also repeatedly hears rumors of supposed demons and devils plaguing the premises.

Would that it were that macabre of a movie, except “Consecration” only dabbles, doesn’t dunk, in tangible terrors like those.  With overcast skies to complement an already grey color palette, “Consecration” actually operates as a gloomy procedural drama anchored around cryptic conversations, whether it’s a seated interview between DCI Harris and a reluctant witness, one of several confrontations between Grace and a tight-lipped nun or side-eyeing Mother Superior, or a walk-and-talk with Father Romero so “Consecration” can briefly take its camera outside for some air.  The movie’s dialogue-heavy interactions of course require everyone to speak in circles because if just one person ever spent ten seconds telling the straightforward truth, what little mystery there is would evaporate immediately.

“Consecration” debuted in theaters, which is strange since it’s not at all noisy enough to scream, “Must be seen on the big screen!”  Much more at home with the subdued spookers and psychological suspense films that go directly to digital, “Consecration’s” low budget and lower ambitions drastically limit any ability to build real buzz, never mind bringing in big box office bucks.

The film feels long, even at only 80-some minutes, for what’s essentially a stealth retelling of a noteworthy “Twilight Zone” episode I’d refer to by title if it weren’t a context clue spoiler.  When the conclusion finally boomerangs back to resolve the gun-pointing prologue, we’re left holding the bag to divine a message out of muddied suggestions about nature versus nurture, intrinsic good and evil, or who knows what.  Too low-key to be of consequential value as a memorable thriller, the only way to take “Consecration” is as a middling one that’s fleetingly intriguing for its reliable, if unremarkable, performances from Jena Malone as Grace and Danny Huston as Father Romero, but not much else.

Review Score: 50

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