A Banquet
Directed by Ruth Paxton
A Banquet is an unsettling, thought-provoking and hyper-tense psychological thriller from director Ruth Paxton. Widowed mother, Holly, is pushed to breaking point when her daughter Betsey develops an extreme eating disorder. She claims she has experienced a profound enlightenment where her body is in service to a higher power. Possessed by Betsey’s illness, her family are faced with an agonising dilemma, torn between love and fear, and Holly is forced to confront the boundaries of her own belief. A SHUDDER EXCLUSIVE.
A Banquet is an unsettling, thought-provoking and hyper-tense psychological thriller from director Ruth Paxton.
Cast: Sienna Guillory, Jessica Alexander, Lindsay Duncan
Member Reviews
I'm very relieved for the large number of reviewers who didn't get the movie because they clearly had happy childhoods with parents who were not emotionally abusive. Honestly, good for you! For the rest of us this movie is a horrific and poetic rendering of real and complicated mother/daughter dynamics.
It was good, but it could have been so much more. The acting was excellent, the cinematography was exceptional, the music scoring was topnotch, there was some nice gore sprinkled in, and the suspense was extremely intense. Saying all that, I feel like you spend the whole movie trying to figure out the meaning. Is it mental illness? Is it an eating disorder? Is it aliens? Is it possession? Is it a witch? Is it some sort of supernatural entity from another culture? Could it be a shared delusion? Who knows, because you get zero answers. So for all the work that went into it, it was great,...but it really deserves closer to 3&1/2 skulls, because the storyline never really sinks it's teeth in and it fails to give you any kind of real sustenance or satisfaction for the elaborate course served. (And yes, that pun was intended.)
Sleep is what you will get when you watch this one. I just don't understand all of the 4 and 5 skulls on these boring, slow, worse than B-Movie movies. See what you think. On to the next.
a little slow, a little lingering and slightly repetative, but still a good movie. it was definitely unsettling, and wasnt quite what i expected (i was thinking posession at first).
Ending was the best part atleast it was a tiny bit interesting.