The Banishing in terms of how it looks at history. I’m curious about how the film came about. What was your process for developing those central themes of religious suppression and fascism?
I read a script, probably about three years ago, which was written as more of a kind of
Woman in Black, bigger budget movie, with a lot more traditional jump scares and so on and so forth. And as we developed it, I was very keen on the idea that it was set in 1936 and I thought it was important that we talk about the rise of fascism. There’s obviously many parallels between that period and what’s happening now, and I just wanted to dig into that, really. And that was completely not in the original, any of the sense of a gathering storm. It all kind of grew from there, really – the idea of a vicar’s wife who is looked down upon simply because she has a past. I always look at that period, certainly in this country, as being like America in the 50s. And then when you talk about this w
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Having recently watched for the first time Ashley Thorpe’s Borley Rectory and re-watched Burnt Offerings, The Banishing comes at a fortuitous time as it draws on the phantoms of the former and the idea of a house that is just plain evil from the latter. Opening with a bloody murder and suicide of a priest and his wife we go forward three years and the arrival of a new priest Linus (John Hefferman) and later on his wife Marianne (Jessica Brown Findlay) and daughter Adelaide (Anya McKenna-Bruce). The house is not in great condition though liveable.
However there are tensions which show up at the dinner table when Adelaide makes a small mistake. More telling are the sexual problems between Linus and Marianne a cause of tension that’s caught up with the pressure put on them by Bishop Malachi (John Lynch) and the stories circulating about the house being built on an old monastery where fanatical Christian monks carried out atrocities supposedly taking them closer t
Director: Travis Stevens
Not rated
Anne (Barbara Crampton), a woman in her late 50s who is married to small-town minister Pastor Jakob Fedder (Larry Fessenden), feels her life and marriage have been shrinking over the past 30 years.
Through a chance encounter with âThe Masterâ (Bonnie Aarons), Anne discovers a new sense of power and an appetite to live bigger and bolder than before. However, these changes come with a heavy body count and a toll on her marriage.
The film is scheduled to be released in theaters, on demand and digitally April 16 by RLJE Films and Shudder.
âNight of the Sicarioâ
Christopher Smith’s “The Banishing,” premiering today on Shudder after a brief fest run, has the stately style and tone of a classical period piece, but it’s also kind of insane. It blends what one would expect from something like “The Haunting of Bly Manor” (and there’s a dose of Mike Flanagan’s “Oculus” along the way too) with elements taken from the giallo kitchen sink, and it all disappears in the British fog. Despite a few strong production values and performances, Smith’s film simply crosses the lane into incoherency and not the surreal David Lynch-esque kind of incoherency that sets a tone, but the this-needed-a-better-edit-or-rewrite kind of incoherency that gets people wondering what else is on Shudder.
The Little Stranger. But as any guest of Netflix’s Bly Manor can attest, restraint has its drawbacks. There’s a fine line between classily understated and boring.
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Thankfully, boring is one word you couldn’t use to describe
The Banishing, which defies expectations of understated British horror with giallo maximalism. Where so many directors would have made one choice, Christopher Smith (
Black Death) makes 10: Mirrors! Dolls! Masochist monks! Bishop gangsters! Nazis! Time travel? Poltergeists! Child possession! A critique of Neville Chamberlain’s pre-WWII policy of pacifism! The patriarchy! And on and on. Over its modest runtime, the film keeps cramming in new ideas and plot elements, right up until the penultimate scene.