“A Banquet” Review: A Claustrophobic and Visceral Family Horror

We’ve come to an interesting time in horror where stories are allowed to exist in a Schrodinger-esque state of whether or not they’re a metaphor. Some stories are not set up to be taken literally at all, some present fully at face value, and some fall in the gray zone of interpretation. Ruth Paxton’s directorial debut A Banquet, distributed by IFC Midnight, is a visceral family horror landing firmly in the third category.

Revolving around the women of a family, this film starts with one of its more graphic scenes. Holly (Sienna Guillory) is caring for her sick and dying husband when he drinks bleach to kill himself, an event that their daughter Betsy (Jessica Alexander) unfortunately witnesses. Months later at a party, Betsy experiences a bizarre communion with the universe and physically collapses. Afterward, she refuses to eat but doesn’t lose any weight. She claims she knows her reason for being now, and is no longer scared.

Naturally, Holly is concerned but there’s little she can do as Betsy’s condition gets worse. She has stopped going to school and seeing friends, she lies catatonically in bed. Younger sibling Isabelle (Ruby Stokes) goes from copying her sister to holding her eyelids open and literally shoving food into her mouth. The entire family is affected by it, even the cold grandmother June (Lindsay Duncan) who believes Betsy to be faking this all for attention.

When Holly can get through to Betsy, Betsy swears to her that this the plan, this is a test. All of this is because Holly is important to the next step of existence, which, according to Betsy’s descriptions, sounds a lot like the end of the world. The two of them get tangled up in a codependent relationship with Holly seemingly surrendering to Betsy’s visions until we’re treated to the truth at the end.

Without giving too much away, A Banquet is primarily interesting because of how many ways it can be read. Whether Betsy is a teen who’s reacting to a trauma, faking it or deluded, her commitment to the truth of the vision is unwavering. Yet much of her behavior could also be attributed to an eating disorder or depression: withdrawing from social activity, no concern and action towards the future. Holly’s approach to Betsy is clinical at first before becoming more unorthodox as she gets worse; there’s enough of the inexplicable to cause Holly to wonder if a larger force is at play.

Between the family dynamics and the smattering of grotesque scenes (a limited amount but done effectively) is a conversation about faith and belief and how those traits apply not only to ethereal questions but to the people we interact with. Lindsay Duncan as Holly’s mother June delivers some of the best lines in the movie. The scene where she tells Betsy that she thinks Betsy’s acting out for attention helps to color in these characters. June recalls a childhood moment of Betsy being a ‘wonderful little actress’ in order to get her way, believing this situation to be parallel. 

Later as Holly becomes more enmeshed with her daughter’s condition, June recalls a folktale from Japan about a Futakuchi-Onna – a normal looking woman that has a second and ravenous mouth hidden under her hair. In the moment, Holly dismisses this as nonsense but then proceeds to dream about Betsy as such a monster. As she becomes more susceptible to what her daughter is saying, Holly finds her personal Overton window shifting. Despite not eating, Betsy isn’t losing weight; she’s alive after weeks without food. We watch as Holly begins to wonder how well we know what we say we know.

There is a space towards the end of A Banquet where the film clearly wants the audience to decide for themselves which parts of this story are metaphors, but the movie really lands firmly in the ‘face-value’ category. It’s about family dynamics and how we impact each other – whether we want to or not – and in the end there’s a core of not wanting to believe the impossible even when it’s undeniable.

At only 97 minutes long, with an essentially a four person cast, A Banquet is slim and claustrophobically made. Once Betsy starts down her path, the movie rarely ventures outside the dark shiny walls of the house, aside from a non sequitur where Isabelle goes to a party, and the perverse family ties really take root. The night Betsy has her vision is one of the few outdoor shots: her standing in a grove of trees staring up at a blood red moon. Otherwise, the characters are always enclosed, confined. They live in a world without air, and can influence each other too easily. The performances across the board are strong, giving more weight to drama which might seem tedious or ridiculous in the hands of a weaker cast.

If this is where director Ruth Paxton is starting, I’m very excited to see where she goes next. A Banquet is a slick and atmospheric horror movie that is allowed to get just weird enough while still being tethered to reality. The cast and an ambiguous sense of impending doom carry this fable of family drama, staring into an endless void every step of the way.

A Banquet is in theaters and on demand February 18.