I was fortunate to chat with director Christopher Smith on All Hallows' Eve about his spooky new film, The Banishing, right before the London-based filmmaker took his two young children out trick-or-treating; his nine-year-old going as Joaquin Phoenix's Joker.

The Banishing is written by David Beton, Ray Bogdanovich, and Dean Lines, and stars Jessica Brown Findlay (of Harlots and Downton Abbey fame) as the magnetic Marianne Forster. John Heffernan plays her husband Linus, a former missionary, now vicker to a dwindling congregation, who’s been transferred to this new post in a new town. John Lynch plays the mysterious Father Malachi who makes backroom dealings and Sean Harris is the occultist Harry Reed who’s well versed in the evil that is “Morely Hall”, a former rectory with a dark past and now home to the young Forster family. The tension-filled slow burn Shudder Original is a 1940s period piece against the backdrop of the Nazis advancing into Austria leading up to Britain’s involvement with World War II.

Smith sums up the film as “hell is being a modern woman in a small town with a bunch of fundamentalists.” 

The Banishing has a feminist message — yes, men can be feminists too — summed up in a particularly fantastic scene where Marianne states that she is a daughter, mother, and how women can be madonnas/whores/sluts. Smith credits Findlay for coming “through so strongly, off the script, with the whole subtext herself.” He asserts that she is a woman who knows herself and had a “life before her husband.” Smith sums up this feature as having a “bitterness that ferments throughout the whole” of the film.

The Banishing has recognizable horror tropes: Looking glasses/mirrors, doppelgängers, a creepy doll, and more — and there are reasons for this. Smith is influenced by an array of other horror films. He’s not so much frightened by any actual supernaturalness and is “more afraid of people” and “psychological demons that get you in the night.” He believes that a great basis for any horror story is having someone on their own a lot and allowing what’s in their heads to get them; ie., “the ghosts we carry with us.” He gives examples like The Shining, and for reference, an essay by Freud called “The Uncanny” which director Stanley Kubrick uses to help construct that story. "The Uncanny" can be summed up with the theme of  “the return of the repressed,” which will make sense once you’ve seen The Banishing. Without recognizing your shadow self (an idea by psychologist Carl Jung) or the darkness you may have, it will come back to haunt you. 

Smith also told me about how he's borrowed ideas from other classic horror movies to make them his own. We discussed the first half of the film The Exorcist, how it “grows and builds” and Smith points out that “90% of what we view now”, our modern horror films like The Conjuring series, borrow major set pieces from The Exorcist. Smith calls what we have now the “ghost train thrill ride.” He says he’s also influenced by Spanish horror of the early 2000s. Smith’s a Texas Chainsaw Massacre fan as well, and the idea of “what’s not there” being the scariest.

With all of this in his mind, Smith details how making The Banishing was very deliberate because of the economics of making a period piece. He says shots had to be very clear and framing had to be well thought out. All of this, plus the strong cast, give us a gem of a new British ghost story that’s The Woman in Black with a touch of Amityville Horror about a woman struggling to keep it together in a new setting.

Smith is now in production on his next contained horror film which takes place in a nunnery, starring Jena Malone and Danny Huston. 

The Banishing is now available on VOD, Digital, On Demand And Digital.