The Banishing offers very little new or revolutionary, but remains relatively enjoyable and features impressive performances and sumptuous production design.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 11, 2024

It wonderfully tackles the 4th century strife between paganism, slavery, philosophy, science, Judaism, and Christianity in Alexandria before the fall of the Roman Empire.

| Jul 25, 2023

When it comes to modern films about haunted places, The Banishing sits somewhere between tolerable and average.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Jul 23, 2023

Christopher Smiths latest has just enough visual trickery, ghostly apparitions, and real-life horror to maintain intrigue in an otherwise standard haunted house film.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 15, 2022

While the screenplay could have better fleshed out plot points to align with the film's themes, The Banishing's sheer number of thematic tributaries meet in a worthy confluence.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 12, 2022

Sadly, The Banishing is a film that feels tired of its own existence, blithely going through the motions of a standard 'restless soul' plot that's so predictable and played out...

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jun 17, 2021

[Avoids] easy jump scares, instead allowing scenes to play out at length and emphasizing a kind of building dread ... a different, entirely superior form of suspense-building.

| Jun 6, 2021

The Banishing has serious potential to be a solid English Manor Ghost Story but it can't get out of its own way with the exposition and baffling plot choices.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | May 14, 2021

On the level of individual scenes, it's often deliciously effective, but the story is astonishingly unfocused and unintelligible.

| Original Score: C | May 6, 2021

So much of The Banishing seems half-baked.

| Original Score: 2/4 | May 5, 2021

A film that's atmospheric and chilly, rather than thrilling and chilling.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 23, 2021

With an unusually complex script, this is another expertly directed freak-out from Christopher Smith, mixing offhanded humour with a growing sense of dread that leads to properly scary nastiness.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 22, 2021

The Banishing is a predictable and unfocused supernatural horror, but nonetheless provides an unsettling atmosphere, a few effective jump scares, and a complex female lead.

| Apr 22, 2021

"The Banishing" loses its nerve and succumbs to commonplace plot devices rather than going for the jugular. Still, Smith and Findlay make it watchable.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 22, 2021

A well-made production with a good cast, just a pale imitation of something that could have been more fulfilling.

| Apr 21, 2021

Can a 30-second scene right at the tail-end of a motion picture derail what had been up to that point 90 minutes of solidly creepy, emotionally authentic old-school haunted house fun?

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 21, 2021

"The Banishing" reminds us that sometimes we're forced to answer for the sins of others, too.

| Original Score: B+ | Apr 21, 2021

It's got some good scares. It's one of those that you wouldn't want to watch with the lights all turned down.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 21, 2021

We've seen variations on this character before, but any time Harry's onscreen, The Banishing feels a little less stuffy, and while Brown Findlay gives it her all, you can't help but wish the story was more focused on Harry rather than Marianne.

| Apr 19, 2021

It's a slow burn to an oddly satisfying crescendo for those tired of genre formats resting comfortably and trampled story laurels.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 19, 2021