Mitchell Altieri’s Consumed has some strong performances, but a weak narrative and undercooked ideas bring everything down.

Sure, there’s not a lot you can particularly do when all you have surrounding you are trees, but man, it’s just hard to muster up any interest in what ultimately amounts to a whole lot of standing around waiting for something scary to happen.

Now, horror movies, especially independent ones, often have only a tiny budget to work with, which can only add to the stresses of production. Consumed, from the jump, is a simple film. We follow a couple named Beth (Courtney Halverson, of True Detective) and Jay (Mark Famiglietti) as they take on a camping trip just one year after Beth’s cancer remission. Their little vacation starts well enough, but it doesn’t take long before the woods they reside in begin to show their dark side. As a mysterious skin-wearing creature hunts the couple down, they are saved by Quinn (Devon Sawa), a mysterious hunter living in the woods. Caught between this strange beast and a potentially dangerous man, Beth and Jay find themselves trapped in a horrifying nightmare and must make major sacrifices to escape.

When you’re someone who has watched a lot of horror films, it becomes very easy to spot all the clichés and contrivances that come with the genre. Sometimes, these can be used in charming ways, but other times, they serve to distract and overwhelm you in mediocrity. With Consumed, the set-up is compelling enough, but the execution leaves much to be desired. Whether it’s the budget or the general lack of creativity in the script that brings things down, the result is a movie that can’t stand out from the crowd. Every cliché and moment you’ve seen in horror films like this is hit here with no real fanfare. Budget constraints or not, the general lack of fresh ideas is where Consumed truly crumbles.

The relationship between Beth and Jay is undoubtedly the heart of Consumed, but at the same time, the script by writer David Calbert fails to drive home the emotionality of their situation. Beth is a character who’s deeply impacted by her illness and, despite seemingly beating it, finds herself distracted by something on her mind. Jay, on the other hand, finds his optimism for the future clashing with the trauma of the past.

These struggles the characters face largely get tossed to one side when the film’s horror elements begin to kick in, and frankly, it’s a real shame. Courtney Halverson and Mark Famiglietti are both strong performers, gathering a lot of emotion and heart purely through their confident performances. With the meagre budget on hand, it’s incredibly frustrating that Consumed seems to focus on the wrong things. When you add some cheap-looking CGI into the mix, many of the creepier moments fail to resonate. There’s occasional fun to be had in the film’s use of gore and practical effects, but it ultimately feels empty and underdeveloped.

In the third act of Consumed, there is an attempt to try and wrap its emotional core around its character once more to create a more impactful ending, but it comes a little too late. Despite reaching only 90 minutes, including credits, the film still feels a bit long in the tooth and aimless in what it has to say or what it wants to show on screen. Is it a story about overcoming the trauma of illness, or is it a story about this couple coming together to escape a terrifying skin-wearing monster and ultimately growing stronger together in the process? Consumed attempts to explore these concepts, but it ultimately reaches an unsure answer. Instead, it opts to do both things simultaneously with mixed results.

Consumed is far from a bad horror movie. The performances are strong, and there’s at least some fun to be had in its regular genre thrills. However, it is a case of unrealised potential, as director Mitchell Altieri and writer David Calbert ultimately feel too interested in the things they just don’t have the right script or budget for. The film plays around with some fun and more existential ideas in the third act, but it all arrives a little too late, leaving everything feeling undercooked. Some solid ideas throughout show that both Altieri and Calbert have engaging, creative minds, but it’s all ultimately wrapped around a story that is simply too shallow to hit as hard as it should.

Consumed will be released in US theaters and on demand on August 16, 2024.

Deep in the forests of Germany, there is a resort, a quaint getaway nestled right at the bottom of the Bavarian Alps. Step out of your car, and you immediately feel like you’re stepping into a postcard; you half expect men in lederhosen, hoisting large steins of Pilsner, to greet you as walk toward the lobby. It’s so picturesque that you might not notice the strange noise emanating from within the woods right next to the guest houses. It’s faint, but very shrill. Something feels weird about that sound, but then again, this region is near where the Brothers Grimm set their fairy tales. And fairy tales are often filled with monsters.

This is where Cuckoo, the creepy new film from German director Tilman Singer (Luz), takes place, and while horror movies do not necessarily rely on the holy trinity of real estate — “Location, location, location” — this setting adds immensely to the immediate feel of unease. One look, and you quickly wonder when, not if, the big bad wolf will make his or her presence known. It doesn’t help that the hotel’s inhabitants have a tendency to wander the lobby in a daze and/or start vomiting uncontrollably. Or that that the unsettling shrieking in the distance keeps getting louder, especially after dark. Or that these sonic blasts have a tendency to cause the film’s visuals to pulse and rewind everything back five to six seconds.

That’s one of the aesthetic tics that Singer utilizes to suggest something wicked this way is coming, or rather, that’s it’s already here and patiently setting a trap. Cuckoo will eventually answer your questions (most of them, anyway; there are loose ends abound). But for now, it’s content to simply unnerve you in the most stylish, Argentoesque way possible. Our guide for this Euro-horror nightmare is Gretchen (Hunter Schaefer). A teenager still grieving the loss of her mother and resentful of her stepmother (Jessica Henwick) — we told you it had fairy-tale vibes — she’s been reluctantly conscripted into living in Germany with Dad (Marton Csokas), his second wife and their mute seven-year-old daughter (Mila Lieu). Gretchen would much rather be back home, playing music with her Jesus-and-Mary-Chain–ish shoegaze band. Instead, she’s stuck in Bavaria, with nothing but her bike, her bass and a butterfly knife to keep her company. Three guesses as to which of those items is going to come in real handy soon.

The resort is run by Herr König (Dan Stevens, toggling between an out-rrrrrr-ageous German accent or a better-than-decent impersonation of Christoph Waltz), who couldn’t be happier that the family has returned to his little patch of Saxon paradise. Seven years ago, Gretchen’s father and his new spouse honeymooned at the resort. Their stay resulted in her stepsister — a girl who Gretchen semi-tolerates and Herr König pays particular attention to. One afternoon, as that strange noise rings out from within the woods, the area below the child’s throat begins to rapidly flutter and she has a fit. Later that night, while Gretchen is riding home on her bike, she notice another shadow on the ground besides her own — someone seems to sprinting directly behind her, hands grasping at her shoulder. When she gets a look at her pursuer, it appears to be an older lady, wearing a trenchcoat and sunglasses long after the sun has gone down. And then shit gets really weird.

There are other, more peripheral bit of information that soon come into play, such as the fact that König has diversified his portfolio and invested in a local clinic just down the road from the resort. There’s also a former police detective (Jan Bluthardt) who’s sniffing around for answers regarding the mysterious occurrences around the joint, and has a personal connection to the what’s going on. Also, did you know that in addition to be known for popping out of clocks and warbling on the hour, the animal that gives the film its title is a “brood parasite” — as in, it lays eggs in other birds’ nests and lets them raise and nurture them as if it were their own?

Cuckoo also doubles as pretty good description of the film itself, though even that may be too mild an adjective — judges would have also accepted Batshit, Whoa! and Oh My God Wait What the Fuck?! as alternative names. Singer seems to be going for a late-period giallo vibe here, when the subgenre entered its baroque period and begin laying the more outré elements extra thick. (See: the original Suspiria.) The sunglasses and overcoat get-up of the movie’s in-house maniac also signify a love of Italy’s classic slasher-a-go-go entries, and there’s an overall lurid feeling that taps into the underbelly legacy of the best, boundary-pushing Euro-horror flicks of the 1970s and ’80s.

You don’t have to know where Cuckoo is coming from or where it ends up going, of course, to appreciate how Hunter Schaefer leans into her role with both an impressive sense of commitment and enthusiastic embrace of the crazier, kookier aspects of the story. The Euphoria star has not only gone on record as being a huge horror fanatic but also that she wanted to make her mark as “a badass thriller bad bitch with a knife in her mouth” (her words, not ours), to which we can only say: Job well done. And let us officially say that we’re 100-percent behind Dan Stevens‘ ongoing career pivot from dapper leading hunk (U.K. division) to playing kooks, freaks and scenery-chewing nutjobs. The two of them hold the film up when it starts to sag in spots, or when the sensation that the creepazoid bells and whistles and over-the-top motherhood allegories are lapping the logistics becomes a tad too much. Look at it through the lens of a dual star vehicle that isn’t afraid to sacrifice coherence in the name of cheap thrills, and this bird only slightly sings off-key. Just don’t tell the Bavarian tourist board.

And so the two weeks when I become interested in athletics every four years have drawn to a close, with a ceremony to mark the occasion. There were many ceremonies along the way, of course, and the Olympic Games are themselves a sort of ceremony writ large, a ritual against which the athletes of Earth measure their worth — though obviously they are busy with international competitions in the years between games, winning medals and trophies and setting world records. But the world has agreed that this is the Big Show, as the world agrees on little else.

Since this is technically a television review, let me just say, before we get to the spectacle, that what came between the opening and the closing, as something to see, was exceptionally well presented — at least if you were watching via Peacock. (I can’t speak to NBC’s broadcast coverage, apart from the opening ceremony, where the commentary was intrusive and uninformative, and the closing, about which more below.)

It was a platform one could dive from in any direction, a well-executed interface that allowed one to follow any sport in any number of ways — everything, anytime, from before the beginning of an event until well after the end, into what I think of as the hugging round. So many hugs! All that goodwill and affection, not just among teammates but between competitors, who represented diversity among and within nations, whatever the peculiarities of their individual governments and nativist movements. It’s a world you want to live in. (The Olympic spirit: It’s not just about the gold, silver and bronze.) An illusion, perhaps, but as Marlene Dietrich said, “You can’t live without illusions, even if you must fight for them.”

As for Paris, the staging of the games — and “staging” feels like the right word — in and around the central city felt inspired, somehow at once very old-fashioned and brand new. To be sure, there were parts and people of Paris that remained unseen, if not intentionally hidden. But erecting temporary open-air stadiums below the Eiffel Tower, in the Place de la Concorde and in the gardens of Versailles demonstrated that a host city might have something to show the world outside — literally outside — its big arenas, something essential to the spirit of the place. (Though, with its many parks and large public spaces, it might be better fitted to the task than any other city.) Putting swimmers in the Seine might not have been the healthiest idea, but it had a look. Races run over crooked cobblestone streets, crowded with spectators, were doubly exciting for being run over crooked cobblestone streets, crowded with spectators.

At last to the closing ceremony: It was almost by definition an anticlimax, given that the games were over — if not yet “officially” over — and every race had been run, if only just barely. (The women’s marathon winners received their medals during the ceremony.) But given artistic director Thomas Jolly’s idiosyncratic opening show, set upon the Seine, one would have expected something interesting, if not on its own explicable. If the opening was an often confusing but certainly stimulating cavalcade of images and events, the closing was presented as a single, stately, snail’s-pace theater piece — something like Robert Wilson directing the Cirque du Soleil. It was bookended by a prelude in the Tuileries — where a choral rendition of Edith Piaf’s apropos “Sous le ciel de Paris” accompanied French swimming champ Léon Marchand taking a bit of Olympic flame to pass on to us — and a Gallic version of a Super Bowl halftime show, anchored by the band Phoenix.

Alain Roche plays a piano hanging vertically during the closing ceremony.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

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The central piece had to do with the founding and revival of the Olympic games, and began with a golden winged figure descending to an abstract Earth to meet, after a solo dance passage, the silvery rider and still-mysterious hooded torch-runner we saw in the opening ceremony, the latter carrying a pole from which the Greek flag unfurled. The Voyager discovered the long-lost Olympic rings. Opera singer Benjamin Bernheim, in a robe made from recycled VHS tape, sang the “Hymn to Apollo” accompanied by Alain Roche, playing a piano suspended in the air, perpendicular to the ground. Numerous gray figures exhumed giant rings, which rose into the air, one by one, while performing tricks upon their interior scaffolding. An (inflatable?) replica of the “Winged Victory of Samothrace,” as famously found in the Louvre, rose from the floor. Lights in the stands — from wristbands worn by the audience — produced giant animated athletic events as one might find painted on a Greek vase. The five airborne rings arranged themselves in the familiar Olympic pattern.

Then came pyrotechnics, the pop show and the protocol — speeches (lovely, generous), declarations, lowering the Olympic flag and turning the games over to the 2028 host. H.E.R., sporting a white Stratocaster like the one Hendrix played at Woodstock, performed “The Star-Spangled Banner,” demonstrating once again that it’s a song best handled by an R&B singer. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo handed the flag to L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, accompanied by America’s gymnast sweetheart Simone Biles, and the show went jarringly Hollywood.

Tom Cruise takes the Olympic flag from Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and gymnast Simone Biles during the closing ceremony.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Tom Cruise, whose status as an international superstar was enough to excuse his presence, abseiled into the stadium, took the Olympic flag from Bass and Biles and drove off with it on a motorcycle, out of the Stade de France and into a filmed piece in which he rode into a cargo plane, skydived into the Hollywood Hills and affixed three extra O’s to the Hollywood sign to create an image of the Olympic rings. He passed the flag on to a series of Olympians: first, cyclist Kate Courtney, who passed it to Olympic sprinter Michael Johnson, who passed it to skateboarder Jagger Eaton, who arrived at Venice Beach. Then the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Billie Eilish and Olympics ambassador Snoop Dogg performed in another filmed piece — recorded in Long Beach, actually — that looked like nothing so much as an MTV “Spring Break” special. (I’m pretty sure those palm trees were trucked in.) Aesthetically, it was like leaving a dark theater after a mysterious foreign film and walking to bright sunlight in a noisy American mall.

Happily, things did not end there. We returned to the darkness of the Stade de France, where the French singer Yseult performed an unusually subtle, sensitive version of “My Way,” whose English lyrics are by Paul Anka, but whose music, by Jacques Revaux, is French. (The original, “Comme d’habitude,” has lyrics by Gilles Thibaut and Claude François.) In case you wondered, why “My Way”?

The commentary was no less inessential with the addition of Jimmy Fallon, who also has a show on NBC.

Yseult performs “My Way” during the closing ceremony.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)