Writer and Director: Joseph Sims-Dennett
A horror film about someone getting lost in the woods is hardly breaking new ground, but writer/director Joseph Sims-Dennett gives it a go anyway. In this case, the woods are in Australia, part of an enormous national park, its scale offered by numerous drone shots. Lost in the woods is Grace Jennings, looking for her brother, David, who, apparently, has joined a commune, three days’ walk from the nearest town. She quickly loses her phone and then her guide.
Grace hasn’t seen her brother for some time. She escaped to the city, while he remained in their rundown hometown with their parents. When she returns to deal with her father’s funeral, the town has got worse. Empty warehouses are full of drug addicts, and notice boards are awash with posters of missing people. Addicts and backpackers are mysteriously bundled into buses to take them to a utopia in the woods. Grace can’t find her brother, and neither does he answer her calls. She suspects that he’s in the forest.
Oddly, she asks her old geography teacher, Mr Green, to take her to the commune, and they set off with two, rather slim, rucksacks and enter the forest. It comes as no surprise that the pair becomes lost, but Sims-Dennett’s film also unravels here, amidst the wooded hills. Mostly gone are the quick, eerie shots of trees rushing by in a blur or the rapid, superimposed images of faces such as her dead father, her sick mother and the undertaker. Instead, for a long time, nothing much happens. Grace and the film just take too long to reach their destination.
And it’s hard to make sense of the ending. At first, the sweeping up of undesirables in the town suggests that The Banished will be an allegory for modern-day Australian politics. Or the fact that Grace’s ancestors are from England would point to ideas of stolen land. But the film’s premise seems to be based on families and the terrible secrets that come with them. However, the nicely lit pietà that comes towards the end implies that this film is about religion.
There are a few jump scares, and the weird face that Grace sees in the trees in the middle of the night is genuinely unnerving. As Grace, Meg Clarke takes it all in her stride. But the audience may not share her commitment.
The Banished is available on digital platforms 28 July.
