DEVOURED

Lourdes (Marta Milans) is an El Salvadorian woman working in a New York eatery called Restaurant Francais. She sweeps the floors, scrubs the bar and even sets the tables. On an evening, she watches with quiet contempt as the middle-class customers stuff their faces.

Home for her is a small bedsit where she splits her time between calling her mother and asking to speak to her ailing son Oliver (Luis Harris), and filling up a jar with coins - money towards an operation that he so desperately needs.

Such are Lourdes' needs that she's not averse to sucking the cock of a suited customer when he offers good money for the privilege, or turning a blind eye to her boss Kristen’s (Kara Jackson) infidelity.

Belittled by the restaurant’s chef Billy (Tyler Hollinger), terrified of being attacked in the subway on her journeys home from work, and skint to the point that she agonises over whether she can afford to buy her sick boy a $10 toy car for his birthday, it’s fair to say Lourdes’ lot is not a happy one: she’s been ‘devoured’ by the unforgiving world she’s felt forced into entering. Small wonder then that she’s being tormented by nightmarish visions – an out-of-focus child ghoul stroking her hair while she sleeps, spectral figures spied on CCTV cameras and so on.

Even a casual friend in the form of neighbouring worker Frankie (Bruno Gunn) can’t seem to provide a light at the end of Lourdes’ tunnel.

Something has to give. It’s just a matter of when, and who will be the ones to suffer as a consequence …

There's something mildly irritating about a genre film that opens with a dictionary definition of its title's meaning. Fair enough if it's an obscure, seldom-used word or term that's suddenly come into play - but do viewers really need to be told that 'devoured' means to 'eat hungrily' or 'swallow up'?

Anyway, I brushed said ire off my proverbial tits and proceeded to go into DEVOURED with an open mind. After all, this is the latest film from director Greg Olliver, who helmed the acclaimed documentary LEMMY. It's certainly a change of pace for him.

Described in its press release as a "slow-burning psychological thriller", that hits the nail pretty squarely on its head. There are a lot quiet interludes between the vignette-style plot advancements in Marc Landau’s screenplay, affording the viewer ample opportunity to soak in Lourdes' predicament and, in repeated close-ups, the disgusting class divide that exists between her and the well-fed customers who ignore her existence while filling their bellies. She acts to survive; they act on gluttony alone. When her creepy visions start, we already empathise with the downtrodden, stressed and repressed Lourdes.

That's a minor problem with DEVOURED right there. For all the restraint employed in the gentle piano-led score and quiet nature of many scenes, Olliver lacks subtlety in his desire to portray Lourdes as a decent woman who has become a victim of circumstance. It's all laid on a little too thick, as are the aforementioned frequent close-ups of food being prepared and scoffed in a clinical, almost obscene manner. We get the social commentary, all right ... no need to force-feed it to us so regularly.

My other gripe with the film is its tendency to crib from Asian horror films. There's an early scene where Lourdes spies movement in a bin bag which plays - intentionally or not - as direct homage to AUDITION. Elsewhere, the likes of RINGU and THE EYE get pretty blatant stylistic nods, while the just-to-say-glimpsed spooks echo those from just about every fucking J-Horror going.

Aside from that, DEVOURED is a pretty satisfactory film with solid performances, attractive photography and an agreeable pace that keeps one on side until the predictable climax.

Matchbox Films' DVD presents DEVOURED uncut and in its original 1.78:1 aspect ratio. The picture has been enhanced for 16x9 TVs. Clarity is fine, this having been shot on HD equipment. Contrast is strong, colours are intentionally drained into an icy palette for a stylised look and the transfer stays true to this. All in all, the picture presentation here is a solid, clean and sharp one.

English audio is proffered in a choice of stereo 2.0 and 5.1 mixes. Both are reliable sources, though the latter comes through the best during the jolting sound design of the film's mini set-pieces. Minor passages of the film are spoken in Spanish (Lourdes' telephone calls to her mother, for example): these are graced with burned-in English subtitles.

A static main menu opens the disc. From there, a static scene-selection menu allows access to the film via 16 chapters.

The only extra on the disc is DEVOURED's original 73-second trailer.

DEVOURED mixes social commentary and dour New York alienation into its character study-cum-psychological horror format. It looks good and is competently acted, but a predictable climax and all-too familiar route getting to that point prevent it from being anything more than a fairly decent watch.

Also available on blu-ray.

Review by Stuart Willis