The Banished (2025)

THE BANISHED is the new film from writer-director Joseph Sims-Dennett, whose OBSERVANCE played the London Film Festival in 2015 and which I also reviewed on here. It's getting a digital release from Blue Finch at the end of this month.

After her father dies Grace Jennings (Meg Clarke) embarks on a hunt for her missing brother David who has apparently joined a mysterious cult of ex-drug addicts deep in the woods. The only person who knows how to get there is her old geography teacher Mr Green (Leighton Cardno) who only agrees to take her if she pays him $10 000.

They set off into the wilderness but soon Mr Green has disappeared and Grace is lost. Her walkie-talkie picks up the voice of a mysterious Michael who claims he's also lost. Her attempts to meet him and to find the cult culminate in a finale that almost makes up for the dirge-like pace of the opening hour of this 96 minute film.

There's no doubt that part of the problem with THE BANISHED is its low budget, meaning that many of the conversations Grace has before she leaves town are shot in close-up (and we're in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio here), presumably because filming is taking place in people's front rooms and there's not the space for a wide shot. Also, every character speaks in the same, measured, monotonous style which may be intended to add to the style of the piece but which, coupled with the slow pace, quickly becomes soporific.

And that's a shame because if you can stay awake until the end the final act of THE BANISHED is very good, with some extraordinary and arresting imagery, much of it religious, that ties together the backstory we have been drip fed in flashbacks throughout the film. So THE BANISHED is not a failure, in fact it builds to a climax that will weird you out very nicely, but it is one for the very patient, perhaps with a flask of coffee.

Joseph Sims-Dennett's THE BANISHED is out on Digital from Blue Finch on Monday 28th July 2025