El Exorcismo

I was quite enjoying this, it definitely has it's moments. It was building towards a conclusion, but then...nothing. It's a film full of loose ends and half-baked ideas. Jessica Brown Findlay is good as Marianne, but her character needed to be written better, with at least some semblance of a person behaving realistically having experienced what they did. Why Sean Harris has the hair of Quentin Crisp is perhaps the greatest mystery here. A reasonably enjoyable journey but the destination is the middle of nowhere.

As I sat down to watch the 2020 horror movie titled "The Banishing", I must admit that I was expecting to be in for more of a haunted house or ghostly movie of sorts. Little did I imagine that I would be in for a snoozefest of epic proportions.

And it is no secret that the movie's cover/poster definitely caught my attention, with its promise of something otherworldly or supernatural.

I have to admit that I am somewhat baffled that three writers - David Beton, Ray Bogdanovich and Dean Lines - could collectively manage to come up with a script so devoid of a proper storyline, interesting characters or anything even remotely scary. So that made "The Banishing" a rather boring and unappealing movie actually. And I got up and turned it off with just 40 minutes left to watch. But by that time, having suffered through a heap of nothingness, then I was just fed up with the lack of anything worthwhile.

It should be said, though, that the acting performances were actually fair enough, and had the actors and actresses been given a more well-written script to work with, then they could have put on stellar performances. Just a shame that they literally had nothing to work with to bring the movie to life on the screen.

The atmosphere in the movie was good and it could have been utilized so well to compliment the story effectively, if only the movie actually had a proper script in the first place.

For a horror movie then "The Banishing" was a very weak and watered-down cup of stale, cold tea. Believe you me. And if you, like me enjoy a proper horror movie, do yourself a favor and stay clear of this 2020 movie from director Christopher Smith, because it is simply a waste of time.

My rating of "The Banishing" lands on a three out of ten stars, not because of the movie's script and storyline, but because of the acting performances and the atmosphere of the movie. However, I have zero interest in returning to watch the last 40 minutes of "The Banishing", as I just don't care one ounce about the storyline or the characters milling about aimlessly and without purpose.

A vicar and his wife and her child are sent to a failing parish, but the vicarage holds a ghastly secret.

Decent performances, the standout being the occultist, who has a certain look and intensity that suited the part - although I had trouble catching some of his lines. Otherwise, the sound design is good, with effective music, and the cinematography makes the most of an old ___location and does justice to the director's flair for mirror trickery and surreal images.

But the screenplay is an absolute mess. This is supposed to be a story of righting a historical wrong, of laying a ghost to rest - think Ringu for pure simplicity with clever story telling ... and then run a mile from this. It's burdened with a preposterous fascist subplot, but also has the cheek to open with a scene that is never integrated into the main plot yet is far more gruesome than anything that comes after, then intrigues with a tango scene - again, pointless - before stabbing away at some blaaah about illegitimate child bearing, before resolving on a completely under-powered encounter at the end. All sorts of themes are tossed in, with an unserious take on religion, resulting in a lack of drive or coherence. Because of this, nothing can really work, and the whole thing is drained of frights.

How do actors, and the director and cinematographer, find the will to go on with this kind of material? Beats me.

There is a lot to enjoy in this somewhat by-the-numbers haunted house movie. Sean Harris gives it everything to almost comic effect and Jessica Brown Findlay is very good. True, there's nothing new to see here and it drags a touch but it's certainly more engaging than many recent mid-budget ghost films.

This movie was full of plot holes. The beginning of the movie is fast paced but then it just goes up and down, up and down from there. There are sooooooo many unanswered things and so many time skips/ jumps from one scene to another.

I will say the cinematography was beautiful most** of the movie. The lighting and setting was movie quality but the plot was not even close to how beautiful the movie looked.

This movie should have been a TV series. It had the feeling of one, but definitely not the feeling of watching a movie. I would not recommend watching this movie to anyone, but it is definitely worthy of being background noise for when your studying or just trying to take a nap (if you can't sleep without noise).