A Banquet

A Banquet

A thunder clap, a blender whirr, cough sputtering and rain drops.

Director Ruth Paxton sets the tone from start to finish in “A Banquet,” using various tactics to maintain the disturbing atmosphere. The payoff is however dissatisfying because of her striking sound design and well-imagined unsettling details.

This Scottish filmmaker’s debut feature is an intimate piece of psychological horror which uses simple but strong jolts. But it lacks focus as it deals with grief, isolation, adolescence and body image crises. And once we grasp the actuality here and how direct these revelations are it feels like a letdown in the end.

However, Paxton has managed to get sincere performances out of the mostly female cast led by Sienna Guillory who is quite harsh. She plays Holly who has just lost her husband leaving two adolescent daughters behind. Her younger sister Isabelle (Ruby Stokes) also lacks inspiration and hardly shows any interest in her regular lessons at skating rink (The use of several scenes set at an empty and cool rink gives a sense of natural suspense). They still live in their enormous minimalistic house, but they rarely interact with each other.

But their quiet separation changes when Betsey goes to party with her classmates and Dominic (Kaine Zajaz) her semi-boyfriend. When she stands on the patio smoking alone she feels something pulling her into the woods under a blood red moon. After this point she becomes transformed: driven by some strange objective where her body acts as a vessel for some unknown world shaking event that will take place someday.

One aspect of this involves not eating anything anymore either.. This adds paranoia to mundane mealtime tasks like grinding pepper over avocado toast or scraping peas off plates later on which Paxton dials up high; similarly creating close ups that show mouths chewing or licking lips while eyeballs dart around making them look alien.

Holly perceptively comments that eating disorders are very common in beautiful, privileged young women like Betsey. It is as if her raw nerves turn into something tangible; she has held it together for so long and now her teenager is pushing her over the edge to lose control which Guillory shows through subtle, building ways. But there’s a little more than this usual mother-daughter conflict, and Bull’s Justin script gives us reason to be curious about what that could possibly be, at least for the moment.

From squirm inducing body horror to typical exorcism images you know, it offers many possibilities that keep you guessing on different storylines. However rather than being red herrings aimed at preserving the mystery of Betsey’s transformation, one almost gets the impression that Paxton and Bull were fishing around throwing up various ideas against a wall to see what would stick.

Whenever this story starts to get boring, the appearance of Lindsay Duncan would save it. Initially she portrayed Holly’s mother as a threat over the phone then turned into the voice of reason that nobody wanted to hear. By just looking at people with her blue eyes, she speaks volumes. There is one very powerful scene that takes place between June and Betsey, which totally changes everything we thought about them and the entire family. However, this is yet another example of “A Banquet’s” theme of promise unfulfilled.

The mystery in our minds about what deal could be going on there is probably more interesting than the actual outcome. A much stronger ending might have been gained from leaving things vague and unclear deliberately. Nevertheless, enough skill and voice exist within these pages to make one anticipate whatever Paxton produces next.

Watch A Banquet For Free On Gomovies.