The Banished (2025) (REVIEW) | Projector Shorts | An eerie but puzzling Aussie bush horror - video Dailymotion

Film Brain

Film Brain reviews a very atmospheric Australian horror film about a women searching for her brother in a commune, but is left confused by the script.

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00:00I was creeped out by the Australian bush in the horror film The Banished, previously known as Baal,

00:06but it also left me scratching my head.

00:09After the death of her father, Meg Clark's Grace returns to her hometown to try and locate her brother David,

00:15who has disappeared into the wilderness to join a commune.

00:18When she tries to find it, she becomes lost and injured, and the darkness is closing in.

00:24Written and directed by Joseph Sims Dennett, who previously held in the movie Observance,

00:28The Banished certainly won't be winning any prizes for originality with its lost-in-the-woods premise,

00:33but it is pretty effective with it.

00:35The first half has a non-linear structure, combing between Grace and Lowe in the trees,

00:39with her only contact being a mysterious man on a walkie-talkie called Michael,

00:43and the events leading up to her predicament,

00:46where she asks her former geography teacher Mr. Green, played by Leighton Cardno,

00:50to lead her to the commune, who then disappears.

00:53I did initially find these time jumps to be confusing,

00:56and while they do add some character backstory and depth,

00:59they slow down the film by breaking up the atmosphere.

01:02Indeed, the scenes of Grace Stranded are by far the most effective,

01:06especially in their sparse use of dialogue.

01:08There's a quiet to the trees, which initially seems peaceful, but soon becomes eerie.

01:14The very deliberate stillness in the sound design makes the silence become threatening,

01:19amplifying every branch cracking under feet.

01:22You really feel the isolation from civilization and help as she watches out from her tent,

01:27or makes her way through the dark with only a torch to see.

01:31It's very effectively minimal.

01:33These scenes where she feels like she's being watched, but she doesn't know by who or what,

01:37are much more incestoring than when they get to the fairly conventional commune stuff in the third act.

01:43There's a lot of stuff about familial trauma running through this,

01:45with Grace leaving her abusive and religious father for the big city,

01:49and thus isn't feeling grief so much as guilt about abandoning her brother to spiral in her absence.

01:56There's also this running theme about the family owning the old mine in the woodland as well,

02:01this idea of heritage and descendants.

02:04These things play a major role in the film's ending,

02:06but the execution makes what the movie is trying to say about this very muddled indeed.

02:11The conclusion didn't so much haunt me as leave me baffled.

02:14I genuinely have no idea what it was trying to say.

The Banished (2025) (REVIEW) | Projector Shorts | An eerie but puzzling Aussie bush horror

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