Consumption – 2007
Consumption starts out with what seems to be a romantic dinner for two. Soon it changes into something more macabre. Something way beyond ordinary people’s frames of reference. Professor George Klubbard and Claudia are fully aware of their commitments and will stop at nothing to complete the experiment. Empirical research that emphasizes unknown states of mind and experiences of flesh few can brag about.
It’s all too hard to review Consumption in any other way than to reveal certain details of it. The following text may therefore include spoilers. Read at your own risk!
This is a short, no longer than thirty minutes long. These have a kind of dramaturgy not comparable to that of the feature films. It’s a more intense way of telling the story and you don’t have as much time to develop characters and so forth. To create a situation is however possible but to get the depth from longer productions is just not easily obtained. It also has a limited budget so no extraordinary details nor production values are neither possible. But it does not have to contain those things anyway! The tone of the movie is certainly amateurish, but still, there is both a feeling of voyeurism and real ambition, underlying values of morality and it’s fascinating at the same time as it’s provoking and really gets under your skin.
Grip of the actors
I can’t get a total grip of the actors though, at first they’re really bad and the feeling that anyone could have done this at home with a camcorder is apparent. The initial events also seem to be unnecessarily trivial. But then something happens! Not really that the acting improves. But as the plot thickens and evolves into a really unpleasant story when the cannibalistic ingredients come along. The production gets more intense altogether. I would compare this, at least plot-wise to films like Marain Doras Cannibal based on the true events of the German cannibal case of Armin Meiwes. Not that there any homosexual eroticism, or heterosexual either for that matter, but the romantic dinner and the victims’ willingness to the whole arrangement could easily be compared with that movie.
Black Humor
Instead of sexuality, there’s lots and lots of black humor in the story. Perhaps of the kind that goes unnoticeable the first time but still is present. It’s a pretty clever dialog, but even if it’s apparent where the storyline is going it’s still a bit of a shock when it’s revealed for us. You get overwhelmed by the obvious, so to speak. It’s macabre and totally disgusting (in the most positive sense of the word). It’s flavored with some really good and shocking gore effects. The blood might be a little thin but as a whole, it doesn’t really matter, the whole point is not to shock with these effects and I’ve seen it done a lot worse in big-budgeted movies too.
So… I like Consumption, regardless of the amateurish production values. I see it as a must for those who are interested in nihilistic, cannibalistic, and repulsive flicks. It manages to stay right on the edge does not get tasteless just for the sake of it and leaves the viewer with a feeling and hopelessness and moral values!
