The Banished (2025) Dir. Joseph Sims-Dennett

This twisted Australian horror tale stars Meg Clarke as Grace Jennings who unfortunately gets lost whilst injured and alone in a forest - of course she does - during a mission to look for her brother who is missing.

With the eerie sounds of the night coming through her tent, Grace struggles to maintain composure but a crackle on her radio leads to her interacting with the voice of a hiker on the other end. But is this person who they claim to be? Will they help or hinder?

Well, the film sets up its mystery and along the way we get hints to an abusive past and a town which has long become derelict as it tries to tie the story to a few more meaningful themes.

However, the problem for me at least is the genre of folk horror seems to be mostly getting lost in the woods, eerie sounds of pipes and a cult or two whose masks are usually made of bark or somesuch.

I'm simplifying of course and there's an acknowledgement that the woods are often a place for low budget filmmakers to make their productions without complex shooting permits. And that's of course an honourable effort when budgets are tight or non-existent. Despite that though, at least a slasher set in the woods is punctuated with a killing spree every now and again.

Folk horror tries to build suspense and tension but forests simply don't instill fear in me in and of themselves.. Whether "high-brow" fare like The Witch (2015) or Midsommar (2019), or low-budget flicks such as Kill List (2011) or A Field in England (2013) the foreboding they try to generate using folklore myths has never really resonated. And sadly The Banished doesn't do anything to buck this trend and at times compounds its worst tropes.

It's not only full of the cliches of the folk horror genre but fright flicks in general. "Hello, who's there?" our protagonist asks as she shines her torch inbetween dark trees outside her tent. Sharing past traumas around a campfire and the search for a missing relative all provide a been-here and done-that vibe.

Granted, with a predisposition to mostly avoiding the genre, it had an uphill struggle from the start. So in fairness, Meg Clarke does a good job with the material given. She is believable and her changes from strong to vulnerable are deftly played. The camera work is pretty good too. It mixes a cinematic sheen with a handheld style that successfully never falls into "mobile-phone footage" territory.

The editing between current and past events is also a nice idea. But the sequences clash and begin to stifle the story rather than add a unique narrative structure. And as such, nothing really gets momentum going as we pause once more for another dry conversation.

Although I mostly enjoyed the director's previous effort Observance, sadly - and no matter how hard I tried - it's unfortunate that The Banished really didn't work for me. I feel that unless you're a HUGE fan of this particular genre, you are really not missing much. And I would say regular horror enthusiasts will be disappointed with this meandering tale, despite many admirable intentions given its low-budget origins.

★★

2 / 5

Michael Sales

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The Banished is available on digital platforms 28 July