Consecration

Religious - and specifically Catholic - horror has been having quite a moment these past few years. 2023 saw the release of The Pope’s Exorcist, The Exorcist: Believer and The Nun 2, while 2024 releases included The Exorcism, Immaculate and The First Omen. The latter two films beinf eerily similar, both set in convents and involving pregnancy, possession and priests - and nuns, of course, but that didn't make for as alliterative a sentence. I personally saw and enjoyed both these films, but I think it’s fair to say that the general premise of each film wasn’t hugely original, which is perhaps what led in part to two such similarly themed films being released so close together (for the record, The First Omen was my favourite of the two, and one of my top horrors of 2024, but it was of course a prequel to 1976’s The Omen, which does nothing to help the case for the film's originality). Therefore, it is refreshing that 2023’s Consecration, which is gearing up for UK release on digital download on the 16th of June, avoids many of these familiar tropes, and instead introduces some genuinely original takes on the genre. 

Consecration follows Grace (Jena Malone), an atheist optometrist living in London who one day gets a call informing her that her brother, a Catholic priest, has been found dead in an apparent murder-suicide at a convent in Scotland. Grace, convinced that her brother would never kill himself or anyone else, decides to travel to the convent in the hopes of uncovering the truth.

I want to keep this spoiler-free, so I will attempt to elaborate without giving anything away. Throughout the film, we see hints to something supernatural going on, and flashbacks to Grace’s childhood, and the ending sequence seems to be intended to connect and wrap up all that has come before. I however, was left unsatisfied, and frustrated at what felt like a surface-level exploration of an interesting idea. It is far preferable to me for a filmmaker to take a big swing and miss, than to regurgitate the same religious horror story beats seen time and time again, and I feel that the idea revealed to be at the core of Consecration is a highly interesting and original one. But, as I said, I was left somewhat underwhelmed by how the explanation given in the final twenty minutes really factored into the hour and ten minutes that came before it, and found myself wishing we had a film made up of all the things we DIDN'T see. That’s not to say I need my horror to spell everything out and give me all the answers, and indeed, it’s often better when films do not do that. But unfortunately, I felt that the most interesting aspects of the film were not fully realised or explored.

All that aside, there is some incredibly striking imagery - the dramatic clifftop setting of the Isle of Skye is wonderfully atmospheric, there is some interesting gore, and the fact that many elements of the film stood out as original is worthy of praise in such an oversaturated genre. The film will no doubt be the victim of unfavourable comparisons to the other aforementioned recent nun-centric films - perhaps unfairly so, as this is an indie film which was working with a much smaller budget, and it should be commended for its original point of view. However, that originality is exactly the source of my frustration at Consecration, the feeling that there was truly a new idea at the heart of this film, which, for me, could have been explored in a more compelling and less convoluted way.