CONSECRATION (Cert. 15), now available on streaming services, including YouTube, was released in 2023, dramatically dividing opinion. A serious examination of alternatives to religious fanaticism or just the kind of schlock-fest beloved of horror movies? Well, to coin a phrase, let us see; for it is sight that’s key to the film’s basic premises. Grace (Jena Malone) is an ophthalmologist.
An elderly patient asks if it takes a miracle to avoid going blind. Grace’s scientific approach gives little credence to that line of healing, nor to how one’s inner being may subjectively fashion the way in which we perceive our surroundings. Several weeks later, Grace, strolling through London, muses about her brother Michael who had always believed that she had a guardian angel. “I used to believe in nothing,” she says. “Now I’m not so sure.”
We subsequently learn that DCI Harris (Thoren Ferguson) had earlier phoned Grace from Scotland, saying that Michael was alleged to have murdered a fellow priest at a convent before killing himself. It all occurred on a remote island. Grace, on visiting, disputes this version of events. So does the spooky Mother Superior (Janet Suzman), who claims that it was a demon. Evil will continue, she asserts, unless her nuns can locate and contain an ancient relic whose powers are creating such havoc. This is the narrative’s first point of departure from a conventional understanding of relics as objects to inspire sanctity: a gift, one might say, of grace, not wickedness.
As the film proceeds, flashbacks and visions capture the heroine’s imagination. Sight becomes insight into a deeply upsetting personal history, which she has so far suppressed. While various Sisters present us with an extreme range of religious fervour, we are shown, in contrast, a kindly face of Catholicism in the form of Father Romero (Danny Huston). Dispatched from the Vatican to discover the truth, he acts as Grace’s guide, explaining to her (and to us) what is going on. At times, Consecration has the feel of Ken Russell’s The Devils: mania in abundance, but without that particular film’s sense of its underlying causes.
Elsewhere, there are attempts to identify in Grace an admixture of good and bad. How is she to cope with former sins, especially if there is some question of what exactly went wrong? Is she someone now aware of misspent moments past and in need of forgiveness? or more sinned against than sinning? And, when it comes to the supernatural elements, where one stands on the incredulity spectrum will determine whether the whole enterprise begins quelling, like Grace, any doubts about faith.
The title of the film may well be an invitation to look deeper than the blood-spattered orgy that dominates its scenario. All that gore obscures serious questions that are being asked about consecrating our lives to God or the devil. Possibly any of us could be guardian angels, benign or otherwise, enabling others to assess the state of their immortal souls. What would it take to see things differently from the beliefs that we cling to? A miracle, perhaps.