A Banquet

There are many psychological drama- horror movies which try to be multi-layered and ambiguous. Most of them fail. "A Banquet" succeeds.

It doesn't matter what is your interpretation, either way, this movie is still interesting at least.

This is not a horror film, there are no jump scares, gore, noone try to kills anyone. If you are looking for mindless fun, stay away.

This is a sad and depressing movie and you won't enjoy this. It's a dive into the madness or sadness, like a nightmare about the end of the world.

But there is still love and hope, unconditional love.

If you are under 25 years old, it will be difficult to understand what this is about. Same if you are not a parent. Difficult, not impossible though. This movie requires a level of emotional maturity.

Every actor here is amazing. If you are in the mood for an art drama mystery movie that will drain you emotionally, watch it. If not, don't.

It PAINS me to rate this an average score, but damn that ending.

Absolutely no spoilers, but to ME, personally the climax, or more accurately, the last few moments, were such an incredible letdown. YOU or anyone may love it, and more power to you. So, I'm not really trying to discourage anyone from making it to the end. Hopefully, you'll get more out of it than me.

UP to that point...I really dug this movie. The atmosphere, tension building, acting, cinematography...ALL so top notch, you'd think you were watching a $50 million-dollar Hollywood film. In fact, I was so amazed during this movie, I was wondering why most Hollywood movies I see aren't half as good as this talent.

The film revolves around a family tragedy that leaves a single mom to raise her two daughters, the older of which is somehow transformed one night in the woods near a party she was attending and now...she won't eat. Okay, there's more to this, as expected, but her lack of eating, mood-swings and possible premonitions will increase alongside her mother's desperation to help her.

This is labelled as "horror," but I'd put it more as a slow-burn suspense/family drama. And I've seen movies like this before and no offense to this cast/crew, but much better. Such as the real horror movie, Raw. There was also a segment of the horror anthology, XX, called "The Box" - also, much better.

Still, it was fantastic to the end and I'll leave it up to you if you decide they did the story justice with their conclusion.

***

Final Thoughts: Completely different movie, but I would also compare this slightly to 2021's Malignant. And that's only a small part of A Banquet. Please know, I loved Malignant 3x more overall. Still, I felt the need to bring it up.

A Powerful Dark Dark Film . Brilliant acting. Film about a subject so close to fiction as to reality very well mixed when drama meets the horror that gets a young girl and her family. I love it. I really did love this British Horror film.

Started slow and got slower as time went on. Seems like a pointless film to me. Doesn't entertain, doesn't provoke thought, doesn't provoke fear. Doesn't achieve anything, much better films out there, Next....

I thought about this movie for a few days after I watched it and I came to one solid conclusion, "What was the point?". The acting was good, and the movie was intriguing and intense, but not in the ways that make for good cinema. The audience has to come away with a sense of satisfaction that their hour and a half wasn't wasted and I'm sorry, but I just can't say that about this movie. It's tiring, it requires a lot of patience and the pay off just isn't there. I get what they were trying to do but...no. It's just not happening with this movie.

If you are patient and can stand long periods of tedious camera shots where nothing happens, then this movie is for you. Everyone else will be bored to tears or worse, they'll end up asking, "What was the point?" like i did. I think that is the worst thing that can be said about any movie.

To the reviewers scoring this movie really high; Stop it.

It seems like there are a lot of disingenuous ratings for this movie ( take a look at their one movie review histories), probably by friends and family who think that scoring a movie high is doing these actors a favor. It isn't. It's deceiving people into thinking that this film is good when it is not.