In the chilling fog of contemporary horror cinema, The Banished arrives as a sorrowful whisper rather than a scream—a film that doesn’t quite leap out with originality, but leans into familiar shadows and stretches them wide. At its heart, Joseph Sims-Dennett’s indie thriller is about a woman lost in mourning, searching for her estranged brother amid a backdrop of cultic mystery and creeping dread. While the story doesn’t shy away from recognizable horror tropes, it’s the film’s suffocating atmosphere and relentless tone of unease that sustain its impact—at least until the final act stumbles under the weight of genre expectations.
A Familiar Darkness
From its opening frames, The Banished makes its intentions clear. This is a film steeped in ambiguity and grief, framed in a way that recalls dozens of other modern horror stories. Yes, you’ve likely seen the flashlight-beaming-into-the-abyss scene before. And yes, the van of cultists and the whispers of strange disappearances might sound like leftovers from any number of slow-burn horrors. But here, atmosphere matters more than invention. For lovers of the genre, the comfort of these elements can be less of a drawback and more of a haunting embrace—like a campfire tale you’ve heard before but still find chilling.
The plot follows Grace (played with striking internal tension by Meg Eloise-Clarke), a young woman tormented by personal loss. Her father has recently died, and in the wake of that trauma, she embarks on a desperate search for her missing brother, David (Gautier de Fontaine). Her journey takes her deep into a wooded wilderness that seems to exist on the edge of reality, where time folds in on itself and the past echoes louder than the present. It’s less a rescue mission than a metaphysical trial, a confrontation with ghosts both real and symbolic.
Her uncle Rex (Tony Hughes) serves as the reluctant bearer of a cryptic warning. He urges her to abandon her quest before it begins, hinting at dangers he won’t fully explain. But it’s not just David who’s gone missing—Rex’s wife Margy (Cassandra Hughes) has also vanished. A local general store’s wall lined with missing-person posters drives the point home: this town has a long history of people simply vanishing without a trace.
Grace’s only guide is the enigmatic and disheveled Mr. Green (Leighton Cardno), a former schoolteacher with secrets of his own. He doesn’t offer help freely—he shakes her down for cash before agreeing to lead her into the woods, making their relationship transactional from the start. His disinterest borders on contempt, and his silence is often more telling than any words he offers. When Grace asks why he stopped teaching, he responds not with an explanation, but with a tilt of his flask—his past, like much of the story’s backdrops, remains only partially illuminated.
A Forest of Fragments
Rather than unraveling in a straightforward narrative, The Banished opts for a fractured, nonlinear structure. Scenes jump between timelines and tones, mimicking Grace’s disoriented state of mind. It’s a clever approach—on paper, at least—intended to place viewers directly in her shoes, to experience the chaos and paranoia that drive her increasingly desperate search.
These fragments offer us a puzzle that’s deliberately incomplete. We’re never certain what’s real, what’s imagined, or what’s being repressed. At times, we’re shown empty tents, strange walkie-talkie transmissions, and ritualistic weapons—a long blade adorned with an ominous symbol. At other times, there are glimpses of Grace’s dead father and fractured memories that blur truth and hallucination. Each piece adds to a mood of unsettling ambiguity, but rarely do they cohere into a satisfying picture.
The woods themselves are key to the film’s sense of dislocation. Director of photography Sam Powyer bathes the landscape in shadows and murky colors, using a blend of handheld shots and high-resolution imagery that feels simultaneously intimate and alienating. The visual style is raw and immediate, capturing both the claustrophobia of the forest and Grace’s unraveling psyche. There are moments when the camera lingers just long enough to make you question what you’re seeing, encouraging viewers to squint into the dark for shapes that might not be there.
Adding to the tension is Tauese Tofa’s unsettling score, a thrumming undercurrent of dread that pulses beneath nearly every scene. His music doesn’t demand attention with flashy crescendos; instead, it hums ominously in the background, hinting at terrors that may or may not materialize. This sonic unease is often more effective than anything happening on screen—a reminder that sometimes, the mere suggestion of horror is more frightening than its reveal.
An Emotional Undercurrent Without Depth
Despite its rich sensory tapestry, The Banished is ultimately a film more interested in mood than emotional resonance. Grace’s journey is meant to be one of catharsis and confrontation—a reckoning with her family’s painful past. But her relationships with those around her remain frustratingly underdeveloped. Green, the most intriguing secondary character, never emerges as more than a sketch. We’re given hints of a tragic backstory, but the film withholds too much, making it difficult to feel any genuine connection to him. His silence might be thematic, but it also deprives the narrative of human weight.
Likewise, the mystery surrounding David fails to gain momentum. He’s more of a symbol than a person—a cipher around which the plot revolves, but who never steps into the light. Grace’s motivation to find him is understandable in broad strokes, but the lack of emotional build-up between them—either in flashbacks or dialogue—undermines the film’s climax. By the time we reach the finale, we’re left with a vague sense of closure that feels more obligatory than earned.
A Cult, A Curse, and a Collapse
Inevitably, The Banished succumbs to the fate of many atmospheric horror films: it promises more than it can deliver. The deeper Grace journeys into the forest, the more the film leans into its folk horror elements—a shadowy cult, implied sacrifices, a backstory drenched in drug abuse and poverty. These ideas are never explored deeply enough to stand out. Instead, they feel like a checklist of genre markers: creepy locals, mysterious symbols, ritualistic overtones, psychological breakdown. We’ve seen them before, and we’ve seen them handled with more originality.
As a result, the third act suffers. The tension that’s been carefully wound throughout the first hour fizzles as the story rushes toward a bleak, “feel-bad” conclusion. The ambiguity that once added intrigue now feels more like obfuscation. The film doesn’t so much resolve as it just stops—offering a bleak truth about the impossibility of redemption or reunion. For some, that might be thematically appropriate. For others, it’s simply a missed opportunity.
A Journey Through Grief and Self-Deception
Perhaps the most compelling interpretation of The Banished lies in its exploration of grief. Grace isn’t just looking for her brother—she’s running from the emotional wreckage left by her father’s death. The woods are less a physical space than a liminal one, a purgatory where past and present blur. Each step deeper into the forest represents a confrontation with memories she can’t quite process, with guilt she doesn’t fully understand.
In this light, the film’s elliptical structure takes on symbolic meaning. Grace’s disjointed journey mirrors the fractured way in which trauma is often remembered. Her desperate need for closure—her belief that she can piece everything back together—is revealed as a kind of self-deception. The horror isn’t just the cult in the woods or the vanishing townsfolk. It’s the realization that some wounds never heal, and some questions are never answered.
This theme is most powerfully expressed in the film’s final moments, when the illusion of resolution is shattered. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. There is no return to normalcy. Instead, we’re left with a character who has given everything and gained nothing. It’s a bleak vision, but one that feels honest in its portrayal of unresolved grief.
Conclusion: A Worthwhile Descent, If a Flawed One
The Banished is not a perfect film. It borrows heavily from better horror stories, and its narrative sometimes folds in on itself without clear purpose. Its characters are often more archetypes than people, and its climax leaves much to be desired. Yet, for all its flaws, it’s a film that lingers—not because of what it shows, but because of what it suggests.
It’s a film that understands the slow creep of dread, the way silence can be more terrifying than screams. It knows that grief isn’t clean, and that searching for answers can sometimes lead us further away from the truth. And even if it doesn’t always succeed, The Banished at least dares to wander into the woods and lose itself.
For horror fans willing to forgive its derivative elements, there’s enough here to enjoy: an oppressive atmosphere, an unsettling score, and a central performance that evokes genuine vulnerability. But for those looking for emotional closure or narrative payoff, the film’s ambiguity might feel more like a dead end than a satisfying journey.
In the end, The Banished is less a scream in the night than a quiet, mournful sigh—an echo of stories we’ve heard before, but still chilling in the right moments. It reminds us that the real horror often lies not in what we find, but in what remains missing.
