The Banishing is what happens when someone takes a very proper British period drama, drops it in a haunted house, sprinkles in a little pre-war fascism, and then asks, “Okay, but what if everyone’s trauma also hates them back?”
Set in 1930s England in a manor so cursed it may as well come with a disclosure form, the film follows Marianne Forster (Jessica Brown Findlay), her emotionally constipated vicar husband Linus (John Heffernan), and her daughter/“niece” Adelaide as they move into a house that is, in estate agent terms, “rich in character” and in reality, absolutely riddled with dead monks and terrible decisions.
And honestly? It’s pretty fun… in a bleak, repressed, screaming-on-the-inside sort of way.
Welcome to Morley Hall, Please Ignore the Sinister History
We open with a cheerful snapshot of domestic bliss: a vicar in Morley Hall murdering his wife in a fit of jealous rage and then killing himself. Nothing says “bless this house” like a double homicide in the opening scene.
Enter Bishop Malachi, who shows up like the world’s slimiest HR manager and immediately arranges a cover-up. Fast-forward three years, and Malachi is basically renting the place out again like it’s just another church-adjacent Airbnb, omitting the part where the previous tenants left via murder-suicide.
Into this spiritual deathtrap stroll:
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Linus, the new vicar, who treats intimacy as a sin and his wife like an emotional roommate
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Marianne, who has a history of being institutionalized, a child born out of wedlock, and the patience of a saint with everyone except ghosts
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Adelaide, the allegedly “niece” who’s actually Marianne’s daughter, and who has the classic horror-movie child skillset:
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Talks to invisible people
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Plays with creepy monk dolls
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Walks into mirrors like they’re doors at IKEA
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The house itself is gorgeously gloomy, all shadowed corridors, heavy drapes, and the overwhelming sense that everything smells faintly of old wood, incense, and bad decisions.
Haunting, Gaslighting, and Catholic Guilt: A Combo Meal
One of the most effective—and darkly funny—things about The Banishing is how it plays the haunting alongside the crushing social and religious suffocation of the time.
Marianne’s not just battling ghosts. She’s battling:
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Institutional patriarchy
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A husband terrified of sex
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A bishop who manipulates her like a priest-themed Bond villain
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And a haunted house that keeps weaponizing her trauma like it’s on commission
The supernatural elements are classic gothic but handled with flair:
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Mirrors that delay reflections and then start lying
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Distorted silhouettes and ghostly figures lurking just out of sync
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Adelaide suddenly chatting to “other mothers” like it’s the worst custody battle ever
Marianne’s visions start blending:
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Her time in the mental asylum
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Her pregnancy
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The house’s religious torture history
Is she losing her mind again? Is the house gaslighting her? Is it both?
Yes. The answer is yes.
Jessica Brown Findlay is fantastic here. She gives Marianne this brittle resilience—she’s not the passive gothic waif; she is utterly done with being controlled by men, priests, and spaces with too many crucifixes.
Harry Reed, Occult Disaster Consultant
Then we have Harry Reed, played by Sean Harris, who arrives like a chain-smoking, twitchy occult detective dropped in from a slightly stranger movie.
Harry Reed is:
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Loosely inspired by real-life occultist Harry Price
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The only person in the film who:
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Understands what’s going on
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Says the quiet part out loud
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Has zero patience for Church nonsense
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He tells Marianne and Linus:
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The house once belonged to a twisted monastic order, the Minassian monks
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These monks loved “punishing sinners” with torture and horrific rituals (as you do in a holy place)
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The land is steeped in suffering, blood, and religious hypocrisy
He’s basically the guy who walks into a haunted house movie and says, “Yeah, this place is evil. Move.”
Of course, nobody moves.
Bishop Malachi tries to get rid of him, because nothing threatens corrupt religious authority like a man who reads too much and talks about Nazi sympathizers.
Oh yes, by the way:
Malachi is also quietly cozying up to the Nazis. Because haunted monks and marital breakdown just weren’t bleak enough; we needed looming fascism on top.
Linus: Haunted by the House, the Church, and His Own Spine
Let’s talk about Linus, the human embodiment of repressed dread.
Linus:
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Thinks marital intimacy is sinful
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Is torn between Church obedience and his increasingly haunted reality
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Gets manipulated like a puppet by both the house and the bishop
The house uses his sexual shame and jealousy against him. He starts seeing visions of Marianne committing adultery, and instead of thinking, “Hmm, this seems suspiciously convenient,” he just spirals into possessive rage. Classic vicar move.
When he discovers Malachi lied about the previous vicar “moving to Australia” (which is apparently 1930s code for “committed murder-suicide in your living room”), Linus finally begins to realize he’s been played. Unfortunately, by then, he’s already firmly on the menu for the spirits.
At one point, fully possessed, he murders Betsy the housekeeper exactly as Marianne previously envisioned. It’s grim, brutal, and heavily underlines the core of the film:
The house doesn’t just haunt you. It turns you into the thing you’re afraid of.
Mirrors, Mothers, and Monks
The emotional core of the story is the relationship between Marianne and Adelaide.
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Adelaide starts talking to “her real mother,” an unseen presence
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She gets pulled into a mirror by the spirit of a murdered pregnant woman
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Marianne’s guilt and fear of losing her child get mirrored (literally and spiritually) in the haunting
Harry explains that:
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The spirit is a woman murdered by the Minassian monks for carrying their child
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The house is full of the echoes of women punished for their bodies, their pregnancies, their existence
To rescue Adelaide, Marianne undergoes a nightmarish ritual guided by Harry and a reluctant Linus. These sequences are some of the best in the film: fragmented visions, flickering realities, and a sense of overwhelming spiritual oppression.
Marianne, dragged through:
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Her asylum memories
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Her forced separation from Adelaide
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The house’s torturous past
…finally rejects the shame forced on her. She declares she is not ashamed, and that moment of defiance becomes her power. Honestly, it’s one of the most satisfying beats in the movie: a haunted mother reclaiming herself in the face of centuries of patriarchal religious horror.
She rescues Adelaide and promises the murdered woman they’ll properly bury her and her unborn child. It’s a brief act of moral justice in a world where clergy have been choosing convenience over humanity for generations.
Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Leave the Church
In a lesser film, that would be the end: exorcised trauma, freed spirits, reunited family.
But The Banishing is not that generous.
We get a final gut punch:
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Bishop Malachi digs up the buried bodies
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Ships them off to Nazi officials in Stuttgart like cursed artifacts on special order
It’s a bleak reminder that:
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Evil isn’t just supernatural—it’s systemic
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The Church in this film is more dangerous than the ghosts
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The next horror is already loading, and it’s human-made
In a twisted way, the ghosts are almost honest: they’re the residue of what’s been done. It’s the living men in robes and uniforms who keep choosing to perpetuate it.
Final Verdict: Polished, Bleak, and Quietly Savage
The Banishing is not a jump-scare machine. It’s a slow-burn, gothic mood piece soaked in repression, guilt, misogyny, and the looming specter of war. It’s less “boo!” and more “oh, this is all deeply cursed on several levels.”
What it does well:
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Gorgeous, gloomy period atmosphere
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Strong central performance by Jessica Brown Findlay
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Clever layering of personal trauma, religious horror, and political rot
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A haunting that feels psychological and spiritual, not just “CGI thing in the corner”
And through it all, there’s a thread of very dark humor—not in punchlines, but in irony:
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A bishop covering up murder while condemning sins
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A vicar terrified of his wife instead of his haunted house
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Ghosts who are, frankly, more morally consistent than the clergy
It’s a story where the scariest thing isn’t the mirror swallowing your child.
It’s the men in power who look at a cursed monastery full of tortured souls and think:
“Perfect. Let’s bury the evidence, sell the house, and see if the Nazis want any corpses.”
Sleep tight.
