August 14, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Joseph Sims-Dennett
Culture Representation: Taking place in Sydney, Australia, the horror film “The Banished” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with one black person) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A young woman and her former geography teacher look for her missing older brother in a remote wooded area, and they encounter terror in the woods.
Culture Audience: “The Banished” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of horror movies about bad things that happen in the woods, but this entire movie is a bad thing that has happened to horror cinema.
Incoherent and tedious, “The Banished” has too many lazy clichés and plot holes in this horror movie about the search for a missing man in a remote wooded area. The story and characters fail to be interesting. There are some attempts to present some unique horror imagery, but it’s all style over substance.
Written and directed by Joseph Sims-Dennett, “The Banished” had its world premiere at the 2024 edition of Beyond Fest. “The Banished” takes place in Sydney, Australia, where the movie was filmed on location. Expect to see a lot of scenes of people looking lost and disoriented in the woods, much like “The Banished” is lost and disoriented.
“The Banished” is told in non-chronological order, which makes this disjointed movie even messier. It’s also one of those horror movies that wants viewers to keep guessing if what is beng shown on screen is supposed to be the story’s reality or a hallucination by one of the characters. There’s also inconsistency about what this movie is attempting to say life after death.
“The Banished” begins by showing protagonist Grace Jennings (played by Meg Clarke), who is in her mid-20s, at a campsite in the woods in a mountainous location called Rear Valley National Park. She looks in an empty tent and runs frantically near a cliff and shouts repeated, “Mr. Green?” Grace is obviously looking for someone named Mr. Green, whom she thought was in the tent, but he has apparently disappeared.
Who is Mr. Green? “The Banished” takes a long time (about halfway through the movie) to answer that question. It’s not spoiler information to say that Mr. Green (played by Leighton Cardno) is Grace’s former geometry teacher from high school. Grace meets up with Mr. Green, after not seeng him for years, to ask for his help in finding Grace’s older brother David Jenninngs (played by Gautier de Fontaine), who has been missing for several months.
Before Grace meets up with Mr. Green, the first half of the movie shows her moping around by herself or having dreary conversations with people. Near the beginning of the movie, Grace leaves unanswered voice mail message to David to tell him that their father has died. Grace was semi-estranged from David and hadn’t been in contact with him for months, but she is now convinced that he is missing because he won’t return her calls about their deceased father.
After the funeral, Grace collects some of her father’s belongs from a priest named Father Jennings (played by Adrian D’Arcy), who tells Grace her father left his inheritance to the church. Grace is cold and indifferent to Father Jennings, who makes this cryptic comment to Grace about her deceased father: “He spoke about you a lot—the golden child. I’m very sorry for your loss. You’re being tested right now. Listen to him.”
And where is Grace’s mother? The movie doesn’t give details but conversations in the movie indicate that Grace’s mother (played by Diane Smith) is still alive somewhere and possibly mentally ill or has dementia. Grace visits her uncle Rex (played by Tony Hughes), whom she hasn’t seen in years. Rex tells her that his wife Margaret, nicknamed Margy (played by Cassandra Hughes), left about a year ago, and he doesn’t know where she is. Grace eventually sees a missing person flyer for Margy.
Conversations in the movie reveal that David is a very troubled person with a drug addiction who was expelled from the family’s church. David has a drug-addicted girlfriend who has also gone missing. It might explain why Grace doesn’t go to police about her missing brother, but she is never shown taking the time to report him missing.
David and his girlfriend were mostly likely homeless, according to the vague information that Grace is able to find out. She also discovers from that some of the vagrants in the area get picked up by a van that takes them to a wooded area that is described to the passengers as “utopia.”
Grace sees Mr. Green loading some of these people in this mysterious van. She later finds out where Mr. Green lives and shows up at his house unannounced. They haven’t seen each other since Grace was in high school. Grace tells Mr. Green that David is missing and asks for Mr. Green’s help in finding him.
Grace says to Mr. Green that she saw him driving the van with the vagrants and asks him to take her to the place where he dropped off the vagrants. Grace suspects that David is there. This place turns out to be Rear Valley National Park. Later in the woods, Grace finds a book of demonic drawings signed by someone named Thomas Jennings.
All of the characters in “Banished” are duller than the dirt in this park. The performances don’t have any charisma and just plod along with the lines of dialogue are recited. Hardly anything about Grace is revealed except that she has multiple people in her family who are dead or missing. And the reasons why vagrants are being transported to this wooded area are so obvious, there’s no real mystery about it and what will probably happen next.
“The Banished” is presented like a fever dream experienced by Grace. All that means is that there are many repetitive scenes where not much is happening except Grace looking confused. The last third of the movie tries to have suspenseful action, but it’s really a weak imitation of many other slasher films. By the end of this wretched movie, many questions are left unanswered. Most viewers probably won’t care because “The Banished” doesn’t have enough in this empty story for most people to feel anything but regret for wasting time watching this junk.
Brainstorm Media released “The Banished” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on July 18, 2025.