Movie Review: When I Consume You (2022)

 

(disclosure: an advance screener of this film was provided for review purposes)

When I Consume You, the third feature from writer/director Perry Blackshear, follows Wilson and Daphne Shaw, siblings haunted by shared trauma in their past who are struggling to put their lives on track in New York City. Daphne (Libby Ewing) is a former addict, five years sober, and is meeting heavy resistance as she tries to convince an adoption agency that she has developed a stable foundation for raising children since she last fell off the wagon. Wilson (Evan Dumouchel) is a janitor at an auto garage who is trying to realize his own dream of becoming an elementary school teacher. He knows from experience that being a kid can be frightening, and his desire is to build a safe environment for his theoretical students. Wilson practices this speech in front of an encouraging Daphne, but never gets the chance to speak in front of the faculty at the local school where he's applied for a job, as he's dismissed by the principal on his way into the building, who claims that his particular skills would be "better suited elsewhere". 

Daphne and Wilson live across the hall from each other in the same apartment building and have a very close relationship. It's clear that Daphne, despite being the younger of the two siblings, has been looking out for her timid older brother for as long as she can remember. She's endlessly supportive and caring, playing games with Wilson in the middle of the night to distract him from whatever anxiety is threatening to smother him at any given moment. In many ways, she's the stronger of the two siblings, defending her brother from threats both real and imagined since they were children. But Wilson has a quiet strength of his own, a soft, almost childlike compassion and an open heart that has acted as a balm for his beloved sister in her darkest moments. The pair have had to stand for each other forever, since they grew up in an abusive household and couldn't depend on anybody else. 

And the lingering scars from that traumatic past are more present than one might assume, since Daphne has been keeping a secret from Wilson for a very long time. She's been fighting someone... or something... that has sought to prey on the siblings since their childhood, only now it's getting stronger, more insistent, and she can no longer face it alone. Wilson will need to find the strength to stand up and face this horror, not only for his own sake, but for the sake of Daphne, because not only are their lives at stake, but their immortal souls may very well be in jeopardy. 

Photo courtesy Exile PR

To say anymore would spoil the plot of When I Consume You, and doing that would be a terrible thing, indeed. I watched this movie cold, not even viewing the trailer first, and I recommend anybody reading this review to do likewise, although I will provide the trailer below in case anybody is interested. It's an expertly crafted slow-burn thriller that deals with themes of trauma, guilt and redemption in a very realistic and heartfelt manner without ever becoming maudlin or letting the story's chilling supernatural elements overwhelm the beating heart of the narrative; the touching and achingly painful relationship between a flawed brother and his equally flawed sister who are just trying to live their small lives in the big city without being overwhelmed by the literal and figurative demons in their past. In addition to the fantastic lead performances from Ewing and Dumouchel, Macleod Andrews (A Ghost Waits) turns in a memorable performance as a lovelorn police detective who may be more than he initially appears.

Our trauma and guilt can consume us if we allow them to do so, but understanding that our past, that our demons, cannot ever truly be erased, with the proper tools we can learn to live with them, to not allow ourselves to be ruled by them. When I Consume You is a story of two people living under the suffocating burden of shared trauma, who come to realize that they can live with the painful memories of their past without letting these memories define their future. It's a powerful, affecting and ultimately sanguine story well told by a very talented filmmaker who has made quite the name for himself since his feature debut with 2015's They Look Like People, and I give it a very enthusiastic recommendation.

-Dustin Bacon

(When I Consume You is available VOD on August 16th.)

Director’s Statement

The experience of watching frightening movies to me feels like undergoing an ancient ritual: feeling the terror of death, and resurrecting in the theater when the lights come up, OK again and happy to be alive. You touch darkness, but you survive. But what happens when we touch darkness every day? When the world is a nightmare, why make nightmarish films? This is a question I was asking myself as I was editing When I Consume You over the last year and a half. When I Consume You is the darkest film I’ve made. We reassembled the cast and producing team from my first two films with the addition of the incredible Libby Ewing, and shot on the streets of Brooklyn with our small crew during the winter. With a team this intimate, the film becomes personal whether you want it to or not. The pain of growing up, the struggle of knowing how to be hard enough to fight but soft enough to love, burned through the cast and crew. As I finished the edit, I realized the film isn’t just a slow-burn nightmare. Despite its grit and sadness, the film is fundamentally hopeful. This is why I love it. There is a hard-won steady message within the movie that emerged as we were all making it that continues to give me heart: The world is hard. Evil can never be defeated. Loving can bring pain. Live anyway. Fight anyway. Love anyway.

-Perry Blackshear