The Reel Review
After a priest dies under mysterious circumstances at a convent on Scotland’s Isle of Skye, his estranged sister visits to find out what really caused his death. Once there, she uncovers murder, sacrilege and a disturbing truth about her own past, in this supernatural horror starring Jena Malone and Danny Huston.
Just as he did in 2021’s wretchedly awful The Banishing, director Christopher Smith again churns out a decent-looking but profoundly lame film, this time featuring a murky, dimly-lit Scottish Highlands as his backdrop. The cliche-ridden script from Smith and co-writer Laurie Cook is chocked full of Catholic horror tropes, confusing flashbacks, and spooky, cultish, self-mutilating nuns. On top of all that, Malone’s Grace starts having sudden, terrifying visions of nuns and priests flinging themselves off the cliffside ruins to their deaths. The more she investigates, the more troubling her visions become.
Unfortunately, the moody, broody horror is like a haunted house that is more confusing than even remotely scary. Its incoherent mish-mash of a story never gels, despite some unsettling flashbacks of Grace’s horrifying childhood that themselves are worthy of a horror movie in its own right. Malone and Huston give it their all, but in the end, Consecration is a boring mess – all style, no substance.
REEL FACTS
• Jena Malone (The Hunger Games films, Nocturnal Animals, Contact) has lived most of her life in Lake Tahoe, Nevada and has been in a relationship with musician Alex Ebert since 2019. She has a son from a prior relationship.
• Born in Bristol, England in 1970, Christopher Smith’s notable films include 2022’s The Banishing, 2010’s Black Death, and 2009’s Triangle.
• Consecration was filmed on Scotland’s Isle of Skye.
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