A BANQUET feasts too thinly on atmospheric, psychological chills (BluRay Review)
Second Sight Films have released a brand new BluRay version of A Banquet and were kind enough to send me a copy for review…
The intersection between horror and mental health is becoming increasingly well trod in recent years as filmmakers, such as Ruth Paxton here, work to map trauma onto the vestiges of unknown terror.
A Banquet exists in the slipstream of pictures such as Natalie Erika James’ Relic, which explored the rampant debilitation of dementia inside a creeping framework, or even to some degree Alex Garland’s Men and the manifestations of Pagan icons in a tale of male toxicity.
Paxton’s work, like both of those films, grounds itself through a distinctly feminine viewpoint and lens, working even harder to dial back conventional tropes as she seeks to find the terror inside a fractured mother-daughter relationship, with the power and impact of food central to the nightmare on show.
Grief works as the focal point for the story in play, as mother Holly (Sienna Guillory) loses her disabled husband and subsequently begins to see her teenage daughter Betsey (Joanna Alexander) steadily become a different person.
The film does suggest a creeping terror behind the prosaic realities of the character’s lives. Betsey witnesses a blood red moon, enters the woodland behind the home of a house party she attends with drug taking fellow teenagers, and returns some time later transformed. She then undergoes a steady rapture, in service of a power beyond her, beyond Holly, as she stops eating and yet her weight refuses to drop.
Paxton is never truly interested in any supernatural under layer beneath A Banquet. The focus is on how grief affects broken characters, as Holly finds it impossible to comprehend Betsey’s transformation, her younger daughter battles her own mental health issues, and grandmother June (the ever excellent Lindsay Duncan) provides her own perspective. Eating disorders and personality morphing mental illness becomes the prism Paxton’s stark film filters through.
In truth, this makes A Banquet less vibrant as a narrative than it could or should be. What it discusses is relevant and at points powerful, with flashes of a cosmic darkness behind what Betsey goes through, but for all of Paxton’s artful photography and restrained direction, the script never truly gives us an avatar to root for or enough of a hold on what fundamentally Betsey is going through. It is too oblique.
That said, if slow burn psychological chills are your thing, A Banquet is worth tasting. It lacks the punch of Men or the atmosphere of Relic but we should all be championing as much female-driven British horror as we can, as the perspective is welcome, organic and fresh.
You can also enjoy a range of excellent features to enhance your enjoyment and understanding of the movie that Second Sight have compiled, listed here:
Special Features
Deformity of the Flesh: an Interview with Ruth Paxton
Improvised Exorcism: an interview with Jessica Alexander
Producing a Feast: an interview with Leonora Darby
Dark Edges: An interview with David Liddell
Glasgow Film Festival Q&A with Ruth Paxton, Jessica Alexander & Sienna Guillory
Family Disorder: The Making of A Banquet
Limited Edition Contents
Rigid slipcase with new artwork by Jen Davies
Soft cover book with new essays by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Jennie Kermode & Anya Stanley
6 collectors' art cards
FILM: ★ ★ 1/2 / BLURAY: ★ ★ ★ 1/2
DIRECTOR: Ruth Paxton
CAST: Sienna Guillory, Joanna Alexander, Ruby Stokes, Lindsay Duncan
STUDIO: IFC Midnight
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