Siblings Daphne (Libby Ewing) and Wilson (Evan Dumouchel) have survived an abusive childhood but have accumulated too much trauma to get to that happy life you might have heard about. Daphne, though certainly the stronger of the two, has various substance abuse problems in her past, while Wilson seems so lost, Daphne appears to be holding his and her life together by sheer force of will alone.
After an unsuccessful attempt at an adoption – turns out being single with drugs in your past is a problem even when you’ve been clean for half a decade – Daphne dies from an overdose of prescription drugs. The police write this off as an accidental overdose, but Wilson saw someone running out of her apartment before he found her body, and is convinced Daphne was murdered.
Going by a journal Wilson finds among her things, Daphne had been stalked by someone, and quite regularly brutally beaten. Clearly, the stalker must have killed her, and Wilson decides to find him and avenge his sister. Which, given Wilson’s soft and anxious personality, doesn’t seem like a great plan. Fortunately, Daphne’s ghost begins to appear to him. She doesn’t remember what really happened to her, but she’s certainly willing to help Wilson toughen up, even if that means “killing his inner child”.
The ghost isn’t going to be the only appearance of the supernatural here, however.
There’s quite a bit to like about Perry Blackshear’s When I Consume You. The acting is very strong indeed: both Ewing and Dumouchel provide the film with a naturalistic grounding even when the plot becomes rather weird (probably even with a capital W). Blackshear’s direction is equally grounded in your typical contemporary low budget indie style, going for a verité feel that’s regularly broken by the strangeness of the supernatural intrusions into the world. This provides the film with a very particular kind of mood, where relationships and the city at night surrounding them feel authentic and real, but this reality is always threatened not so much by complete breakdown but by metaphors about inner realities becoming outwardly real as well. The sharp, and expressive editing – no problems getting out of a scene at the right moment here – further emphasises this quality.
The script – also by Blackshear - generally sells its tale of hurt people, trauma, and shit happening to people who certainly don’t deserve it very well, treating its stranger ideas with a matter of factness that makes them convincing even if you’re like me and not terrible interested in tales of the supernatural where the weird is metaphorical first. There are a couple of somewhat jarring notes of pat American kitchen sink Buddhism, but the film is otherwise so strong in its portrayal of very damaged people and a sibling relationship so strong, coming back from the dead just seems logical, I can’t get too worked up about that.
Particularly not when the rest of When I Consume You is quite this individual and genuinely interesting.
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