The Banished review – cultish terrors lurk in the Australian outback

The folk-horror wave opens an Aussie branch in this shrewdly splintered tale of a city girl returning to her roots where chthonic menace awaits

Weirdos in animal masks, summary executions, rituals that envelop you in a strange sense of predestination; thanks to the folk-horror crowd, you can’t go for a country walk these days without expecting to stumble into some uncanny pagan savagery. This Australian thriller subscribes unquestioningly to all of the above tropes, but its delicately splintered narrative and feel for outback disorientation and dismay mark out a distinctive trail – until it disintegrates to the point the film can only turn in circles.

Prodigal city girl Grace (Meg Eloise-Clarke) comes back to her home town in the bush to search for her missing brother David (Gautier de Fontaine), who saved her from their abusive father. Nosing around this depressing outpost, she hears rumours of a mysterious commune out in the wilderness drawing in local vagrants and drifters. Her uncle (Tony Hughes) warns her off investigating – but of course she ignores him, as well as the pile of keepsakes hinting at her family’s long involvement in cultist shenanigans. So she slings a few grand to her shady former geography teacher Mr Green (Leighton Cardno) to escort her out into the scrub.

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