It’s probably not a misdirect, and maybe not even an accident, that the most striking thing about “A Banquet” – Ruth Paxton’s ominous, open-ended horror jaunt about roads taken and not taken after loss – is the divergent touches of its production design. You don’t really notice the emerald green of a garden’s fauna until you notice it through the windows of the black hole of a home where most of this movie unfolds, just like you don’t really see the creeping anguish behind the eyes of its occupants unless you knew they were quietly reeling from tragedy.
I don’t mean that as a slight against the actors, especially not Sienna Guillory, whose emotional spirals as newly widowed mother Holly nestle comfortably enough into that volatile territory between confusion and agitation that we’re never quite sure if she’ll be her family’s salvation or its primary threat. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of horror frameworks will find every sign of the latter in her introverted daughter, Betsey (Jessica Alexander), who becomes prone to bouts of blindly staring off into space after falling under the spell of a blood moon it seems only she can see.
Paxton’s got the goods to make that sequence and others into feasts of morbid mood; there’s a fairy-tale elegance to the atmosphere and expertly crafted sound design makes the crackle of bacon sound like the crunch of bone. But the connotations of her feature directorial debut’s title don’t apply as efficiently to the weak muscle of Justin Bull’s screenplay. It’s both admirable and also a bit strange how “A Banquet” conjures up images so vivid – and, in at least one particularly memorable moment, grotesque – and yet so restrained in their narrative impact.
Last week saw the release of “The Sky is Everywhere,” another trauma-inflected movie that opens with the sudden death of a beloved relative before turning its focus to the hazy path that lies ahead. That’s about where the similarities end. “A Banquet” is the creepy and cryptic cousin to Josephine Decker’s effervescent YA drama; oppressive where the latter is buoyant; chained in place where the other is dynamic.
The contrast isn’t in itself a bad thing, of course. There are even hints of truth to Holly’s maternal floundering, and to the way the house feels much smaller but infinitely more dangerous the more Paxton constrains our perspective to her anxious one. But there’s also something borderline cosmic trying to wriggle its way into that tantalizing dynamic between anguished mother and maybe-possessed daughter; the effect is a movie trying to split the difference between “Hereditary” and “Melancholia” while landing somewhere more emotionally elusive than both.
“I’ve been chosen,” Betsey insists to her mother, and it’s when she starts to explain what for that you start to feel Bull’s screenplay starting to strain and search for real sustenance of its own. It doesn’t take seeing very many of Betsey’s lucid episodes before “A Banquet” starts to feel as aimless, even if you’re hoping against hope not to lay eyes on what she’s seeing out there. There’s a method to this madness, certainly, but what’s the meaning? And in a movie mostly devoid of genuine frights as this one is, can we be blamed if we don’t really feel all that compelled to find out?
"A Banquet" is not rated. It's now showing in some San Antonio theaters, and is available to rent on digital platforms.
Starring: Sienna Guillory, Jessica Alexander, Ruby Stokes, Lindsay Duncan
Directed by Ruth Paxton
2022
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