The Banishing is a convoluted storytelling mess supported by a stellar cast

 

Stellar cast, but dragged down by its messy storytelling. (Image courtesy of heavenofhorror.com)

When news of The Banishing was released, the first pieces of info to come out was the announcement that Sean Harris, John Heffernan and Jessica Brown Findlay were being cast as the titular characters for this turn of the century horror movie. To be absolutely honest with you, we weren't too bothered with Heffernan or Findlay (although they do have impress wikipedia pages), but Harris joining the cast was music to our ears. And why wouldn't we be excited? Harris manages to take on every character he's given and make it his own. I mean, did you ever believe that Santino from Deliver us From Evil was Harris? He adds his own dramatic flair and individuality to every role he plays, to stunning effect. This proves double for his role in The Banishing as Harris must be having backaches from carrying the entire movie. 

Aside from Harris, Heffernan and Findlay, The Banishing also stars John Lynch, Anya McKenna-Bruce, Adam Hugill, Jason Thorpe and a bunch of others who play minor and less effective roles which by the second half of the movie, just leave them forgettable. 

Marrying a reverend always feels like a safe bet... until he moves into a haunted house. (Image courtesy of thehollywoodnews.com)

The Banishing tells the story of a young reverend, Linus Forster along with his wife and child, who move into Morley Rectory, a manor which holds a terrifying secret. 

Soon after moving in, the entire Forster clan start experiencing psychological delusions of hooded men, spirits and other disturbing visions which leads them to assume that they're going crazy. Not long after her first incident, Marianne meets Harris' character Harry Reed, who tells the history of the house and its previous tenants. Marianne then starts to investigate the house, her daughter's peculiar behaviour and the Bishop's mysterious character.

It's like that weird part of Pornhub you mysteriously found yourself in after you took a left turn at "redneck" (Image courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com)

The movie takes you down very confusing corridors of storytelling and mixed scenes spliced together with the intention of keeping your mind off the main storyline and on individual characters. It has a mediocre approach to editing choice scenes which just leaves very little understanding of the overall narrative. 

Several times we've had to stop the movie, rewind it a few minutes to figure out what was happening. Towards the end, we just gave up trying to understand it and focused on the jump scares, ambiance, character development and ending. 

If it wasn't for Harris' scenes, we would've gave up entirely. Also, there weren't a lot of jump scares and instead, the movie relied on ambiance-heavy scenes to illicit the creepiness of the movie. We appreciate that and have nothing bad to say about it.

One of our favorite scenes in the movie was when Marianne was playing "What's the time, Mr. Wolf" and you expected a jump scare at the end, but it dragged the scene longer and you followed Marianne as she went looking for her child around the house and through mysterious corridors only to be jump scared by Adelaide as Marianne stares perplexed into a standing mirror. That's how you stretch a horror scene and bring it around full circle. 

Harris just being amazing. (Image courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com)

Aside from that scene, there was little The Banishing had left with to be desired. The storyline was pretty straight forward but the scene stitching was so messy that you had to think twice before trying to come up with your own hypothesis for the movie. It was fully revealed at the end though, but too little too late as it wasn't a eureka moment. But for a horror movie, it stood out against the many flops that came out the same year. 

All in all, Asian Does Horror gives The Banishing 👻👻👻 ghost emojis out of five. The extra emoji was for a good effort and for being able to cast Sean Harris.