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Overview
This time we’re watching a movie that was direct to streaming on the Shudder channel. Shudder has definitely picked up in recent times from a station that only played the cheesiest movies to now doing their own. How does this movie compare to Christopher Smith’s Triangle? Well, of course, listen to find out.
it’s a period piece and a Catholic church focused movie. It does feature historic figure Harry Price, which is interesting in itself. There’s some weirdness in here that most of you will enjoy.
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Transcript
Stephen: [00:00:00] Here we are season five. What is this episode? I think six or seven. Yeah. Six. Something like that. And it’s the banishing, which is interesting because it was a shutter exclusive how does it compare to a big screen release? First one we’ve got. So let’s talk about it. Yeah.
Let’s see. And before we get into the show, I want to do a shout out to a new friend of mine, Scott Donnelly. And his micro terrors podcast. There are short little stories for kids, horror stories for kids. I met him at the Columbus book fest. He’s done a really cool thing. Like our buddy, Jeff strand.
He went back to the seventies, eighties and found some. rated movies that nobody remembers and actually got a hold of the people that made it and said, Hey, can I write a novelization about this? And pretty much they’re all like, yeah, sure. Whatever. So when I saw him at the book fest, he had blu rays of the movies with the book to go with it.
And I’m like, that’s pretty cool, man. [00:01:00] So shout out to Scott. Awesome. Hey, Scott, so let’s move on to the banishing and find out how this is different than some of our expensive movies like Ben’s battery for 6, 000.
Rhys: I don’t know what the budget on this was again. It was a straight to streaming thing. So you don’t really get that kind of information.
I don’t know that it would be cheap. It was a period piece.
Stephen: Yeah. And overall watching it, it felt like a big screen movie. All around it looked like it the, just the flow, the camera angles, those are little things, it could just be me, but it seems a lot of.
Indie movies don’t follow those templates that everybody gets used to in the big theater. This felt like it followed those quote unquote templates, common shots and common way it looks and things like that.
Rhys: Yeah and the reason we’re talking about it is this movie was directed by Christopher Smith, who did The Triangle, which we reviewed back in season one, I believe.[00:02:00]
Stephen: And if I didn’t know that ahead of time, I would have said, wow, this reminds me a lot of the triangle with the way the story flowed. Yeah.
Rhys: This is a case, not unlike the none by Christopher Hardy where he was a director who did. Yeah, he did the hallow and he wrote and directed the hallow, but the none he just directed.
And in this case with the banishing, we once again have Christopher Smith directing, but he did not write this.
Stephen: There were still a lot of similarities with, Oh, for sure.
Rhys: Yeah. He was a good pick for it. And I think this movie does a few things well, it does one thing incredibly well, and then it’s got one, it’s got one or two major drawbacks to it, in my opinion.
Stephen: Alright, we’ll get to those.
Rhys: Yeah. So he directed this was written by David Benton, Ray Bogdanovich, [00:03:00] and Dean Lines, and they’ve worked together in the past. But not on any real, any title you’re going to recognize. But yeah, the three of these guys have worked together intertwined between. Each other throughout their careers.
Stephen: There you go, Scott. If you’re listening, there’s some new movies for you to go find and write novelizations for that. Nobody’s yeah.
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. Garden, the Hatton garden job, radio silence, and pounded. Those are three of the titles that these guys have done. Wow. Have fun tracking those down. One of the things, and for me, actually the absolute best part of this entire film happens at the very end. And I don’t mean at the very end, at the end of the credits, as the credits scroll by, if you pause it at the end, where it’s like, this movie is a fictional story and is not entitled to represent, this is what it says.
[00:04:00] This motion picture is inspired by actual reports, real locations, and reported historical events. For dramatic purposes, characters, incidents, locations, and dialogue have been fictionalized, and the dates and or location of certain reported events have been changed. That’s
Stephen: awesome,
Rhys: because they didn’t push it as that.
That’s exactly it. All of those movies that are like, based on real events. This actually is, so much so that they had to put it in the legal at the end. And they never
Stephen: mentioned it that’s even more awesome. You’re right. That is that we find all these little things about these movies that it’s oh that just brought it up another level in my estimation.
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. It was based on a case by a real life ghost hunter named Harry price. Who operated around the turn of the century. I know the name. I’ve heard it
Stephen: mentioned at times.
Rhys: He is like the British equivalent of Harry Houdini. In fact, they were contemporaries and knew each other. [00:05:00] They got along well.
The big difference between the two is Harry Price still put some belief in supernatural things and Harry Houdini did not.
Right,
but they both would go around and debunk, frauds and things like that. This guy was born in 1881. He died in 1948. He joined the magic circle in 1922, which is a British society for magicians.
And he joined the society for psychical research in 1920. He was appreciated because unlike Houdini, he actually believed in supernatural things. But in 1925, he had a falling out with the Society of Psychical Research and he founded the National Laboratory of Psychical Research. So It’s one of those things where, yeah, we’re not getting along, so I’m just going to go over here and do exactly what you’re doing, but I’m going to do it better.
Stephen: Isn’t that why Satan was kicked out of [00:06:00] heaven?
Yeah,
Rhys: yeah. One of the most famous cases that he worked on was the Borley Rectory in Essex. And he referred to it as the most haunted house in all of England. And this is what the movie’s based on this specific case.
Stephen: And that’s interesting that they didn’t push that at all.
They didn’t do the opening with Harry investigating, they could have.
Rhys: And the funny thing was that when I looked this up and I was looking at reviews and things, a lot of the reviews I came across, We’re from British people who were excited to see that he was being portrayed in this film and they were like, Oh my gosh, it’s so great because here you have Harry price movie about Harry price.
That’s awesome. It would be like us, being in France and seeing a movie that had Harry Houdini in it. Where everyone else is just Oh, what a cool character. And we’re like no, you don’t get it. This is a real guy.
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: [00:07:00] So this rectory was built in 1862 by the Reverend Henry Ellis Bull.
It sat atop the bones of an old rectory, which had burnt down in 1841. So about 20 years earlier, there are lots of tales about hauntings that occurred there over the next 40 years. Including some about an ancient monastery and all of the indiscretions between monks and nuns that occurred there.
It’s all been proven false. There was never a monastery on those grounds, like in all of history. But that was the colloquial story that went with the property.
Stephen: Which becomes more of a reality than the real
Rhys: history. Yes. In 1928, Reverend Guy Smith moved in with his wife and they found a package in the cupboard that had the skull of a girl in it.
And they say that the hauntings picked up more after they discovered that skull in the cupboard. And that’s what brought Harry Price to Borley. [00:08:00] And it became the basis for the whole film.
Stephen: That’s awesome. I didn’t click with that, but I love that.
Rhys: Yeah. And so that’s for me, that was like the big, awesome takeaway for the film.
The biggest downside for the film for me, it’s not scary. Yeah, not really. It’s very atmospheric. They do a great job with that. It does a great job of showing you the societal structure of the early 20th century, I think,
Between, the cast levels that you had in England and where women’s roles were supposed to fit.
The direction is all well done. But the only person that I was scared at all for was the guy who played Harry Price’s character. I thought, Oh, this guy’s going to get his ass beat. And he does at one point in time in the film.
Stephen: Yeah. I can, I definitely can agree with all that. But again, like triangle, it’s one of those where you question, is this a real thing?
[00:09:00] Is this in somebody’s head? Is it a haunting almost every scene? And it gets confusing at times. It’s definitely one to go back to rewatch to try and catch things.
Rhys: And that was one of the reasons why I was like, Christopher Smith was perfect for this. Because if you watch the start of triangle pretty much for almost Three quarters of the movie, it’s a ride, but you still really don’t know what’s going on.
And the start of this is very similar, where you have like stuff going on and you’re like, what the hell is that? It doesn’t get answered until later.
Stephen: Which! Is you know, we talk about story a lot, I’m involved with different authors and all that. That’s one of the things that editors and other authors always say is, Oh, you gotta have the dead body on page one.
And I’m like, not for horror. That’s like a bad choice for horror. And I think only other horror people get that, you gotta have a good buildup. And like you said, this isn’t scary, but it’s got good atmosphere. Sometimes you don’t [00:10:00] need that jump scare. You don’t need the bloody knife.
You have that in here too, but yeah, that atmosphere keeps you on edge and keeps you wondering sometimes. And he does do that very well.
Rhys: My son and I were talking about, and you can take this to your next literary conversation with these bozos. My son and I were talking about this. Cause I was getting books out for him to read.
He was looking for stuff to read. And so I was getting out of the cupboard and I was like pet cemetery. Yeah. Is the perfect example of that because for half of the book, Stephen King just makes this everyday life with this everyday family that you get to know, and you get to like them. And then when stuff starts to happen, it makes it so much more impactful because you’re like, I identify with this guy.
He could be the guy right across the street that I’d have a beer with. And if you don’t have that built up, then you don’t have the, you don’t have the concern. You don’t have the fear for the character. Exactly.
Stephen: Yeah. And King definitely is the master of that. Anybody [00:11:00] else, that whole first half of Pet Sematary would have been like 20 pages for anyone else.
King can keep it going and you don’t, now. Yeah, it said you and I have read a lot of King. If I read multiple King books in a row, I get really burnt out. And I’m like, Oh, this is like identical. It’s almost a King template. Yeah. Put them aside for a while. But then I always go back and I’m always like, Oh my God, this is awesome.
Even books I’ve read, yep. Yeah. And that’s a good example too, where When church dies, you don’t, you’re crying out, but it actually gets worse. Most of the time when the animal dies, that’s the worst thing and everything else, but it gets worse.
Rhys: Yeah. It’s okay, we’re at this level. Can it go higher?
Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. Like martyrs.
Stephen: Yes. Yeah.
Rhys: Yeah, we’re right here. Oh, we’re gonna go. Oh, no, we’re going way up here. You
Stephen: know, I’d love to find out if King ever saw Martyrs and what he thought. Good question.
Rhys: So this movie ran an [00:12:00] hour and 37 minutes. It’s got that nice timing and makes it two minutes shorter than The Triangle.
The triangle was nominated for six awards and one, one, this was, didn’t get any of that kind of treatment. And we’re still
Stephen: in those days when streaming is the black sheep of the media family.
Rhys: And I think that’s why, because it was, went straight to streaming. And so let’s talk about shutter for just a second.
When shutter came out. I was interested, but I had trepidation and the main reason was the same reason I had trepidation about Disney plus when it first came out, it was like, you only have so many titles. And in order to actually compete with things like Netflix or Hulu, who have a huge array of titles, you’re going to have to start generating content.
You’re going to have to do it quickly. And if it’s quickly generated [00:13:00] content, the quality of it tends to drop. And so that, that was my whole fear with Shutter is that it’s very niche. If I we just recently got HBO max and I looked up their horror section, which is pretty good size and found there were 30 titles in the entire section that I had not seen.
And so I’m on a quest to see, watch them all. And I think I’m down to 12 or something like that. And it’s included. I’m really bad about watching sequels and it includes all the Friday, the 13th sequels, and it included all the children of the corn sequels.
Stephen: That’s 22
Rhys: right there. I dutifully watched them all much to my dismay over time.
Um, even at that, like HBO max has a thousand other titles and their horror title maybe has a hundred movies to it or so. I don’t know that you could spin an entire streaming service off of that.
Stephen: And definitely when shutter started, I looked at it too. And I liked that you had [00:14:00] trepidation.
Cause then that the idea of horror, but I, I was the same way. I’m like, oh, a low budget horror streaming. And when you look at the titles, it’s yeah, I don’t know a single one of these movies and they probably all suck. So no, I’m not spending my money on you, but they definitely move beyond that.
They, like you said, they’re making their own content and they’re starting to get Bigger and bigger movies, better and better movies. And they don’t have them all the time. They are, they probably have some agreement. Hey, you get this for two months and it’s a good cost for them for get people in and they keep the turnover.
So I definitely have been watching some shutter a little bit more, but it’s also one of those streaming services where I’ll watch it and then I’m like, Oh, I haven’t watched it for a month. I’m going to turn it off for a while and go back to it at Halloween or something.
Rhys: Yeah, I think. And The banishing is a perfect example of it because again, the movie’s well made.
I think my biggest problem is there’s this disconnect because you have Christopher Smith’s [00:15:00] complex direction with the confusing stuff, which is very adult, not adult in like nature, but adult to like grasp, but the actual fear level of the movie is 10 year old. And so there’s that gap between the two.
And if you’re like us, where you’re just watching it, to watch it and enjoy it as is, regardless of whether it’s scary or not, it’s hard to scare us nowadays with movies. When we started
Stephen: with Martyrs, geez.
Rhys: Yeah, it’s it works for guys like us and it would work with a very intelligent kid.
But if you are the everyday, I want to go out and see like the Freddies and the Jasons, you’re going to hate this movie.
Stephen: Yeah. It definitely was enjoyable and well worth watching on a streaming service. I would have been very disappointed going to the theater and being like, yeah, I could have paid 10
Rhys: bucks to see this.
I’d been mad.
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: Yeah. It was released in stages in Spain and in the London freight fest, [00:16:00] and then it ran across the UK as a video on demand it. Oh, I do have little financials. It netted 563, 000 globally on release. I don’t know how much they spent on it.
Stephen: Yeah. And those are hard numbers to get because, they got a million subscribers paying this much.
How many of them watch this movie and did they watch it all the way through it? Yeah, very difficult. Plus it’s private. So it’s we don’t have to tell you, screw you.
Rhys: And I think the only reason we have that is because it originally released as video on demand, not through shutter.
Shutter bought the rights after it made that tour. That makes sense. The triangle just for comparison, but was budgeted at 12 million and it grossed 1. 3 million in theaters, premiering again at the London fright fest and doing a theatrical run in England, Belgium, and the Netherlands. So, their theatrical run, being.
As small as it was, it’s surprising that the triangle did as well as it did.
Stephen: Yeah. I wonder how it’s done since then.
Rhys: [00:17:00] That’s a good yeah, they said it was very well shoot. I’m trying to think who distributes this. We’re big fans of their movies, but they were saying it was like ranked fourth on their movies that it gets distributed by
Stephen: was a mirror max.
Rhys: No, it wasn’t. It was,
Stephen: I don’t want to say because Was it? Maybe. Maybe. Okay. Whatever. It’s that’s irrelevant. But that’s one of the things with a lot of these horror movies. They get a cult following or more of a following over time and you’ll get people watching 15, 20 year old horror movies had never seen it before and enjoying it.
Horror movies hold up quite often as long as the effects aren’t
Rhys: Christopher Smith was born in Bristol in 1970. He’s directed 15 projects and written 11 and I’ve seen tons of them. I haven’t been a fan of all of them. Like he did creep. I was, I didn’t like that mud too much. He did severance, he did triangle, the black death, get Santa, detour, [00:18:00] consecration.
And he’s got two films in the work spider Island and video nasty. Whatever that is,
Stephen: it’s the sequel to Debbie does Dallas,
Rhys: I guess the banishing has everybody who acted, I thought did a good job. Yes. They the actors are very heavily British based, like BBC based actors. So again, we’re not going to know a whole lot.
These guys are in.
Stephen: Any of our Irish or UK listeners very well. So we apologize that we’re dumb Americans in this regard.
Rhys: Yes. Yes. Jessica Brown Finley plays Marianne, who is the main character. She was born in Kakuma, England, and she was known as a television actress. Her first full 2011, a movie called Albatross.
She did an episode of black mirror. She had a very long run on Downton Abbey. She was in winner’s tale, Victor Frankenstein, which is actually on that HBO I haven’t seen yet list.
Stephen: I just saw the trailer for that and didn’t realize it was McAvoy and Harry Potter in that [00:19:00] movie.
Rhys: I was like, I
Stephen: might have to see
Rhys: this.
And she had long runs on the following series. She was on Harlots, A Brave New World, and Castlevania. She voiced Lenore for all the Castlevania fans out there.
Oh,
High price. She has four upcoming projects an unsuitable game, Mother Mary, Whatever After, and Playing Nice. And those last two, whatever after and playing nicer to television miniseries.
If you don’t have, what is it? Brit box over here, you’re not going to see those, but Hey, who knows everyone’s while Netflix will pick up those miniseries a few years later and
Stephen: yeah, they’ve been doing more of that. Thank God.
Rhys: Yeah, John Heiferman plays Linus Forester. He was born in Essex, which is actually where the story takes place.
In 1981. He’s been in 57 projects playing a vicar in a short called Little Claws and Big Claws. So he typecast as a preacher apparently.
Yeah.
He played in King Lear. [00:20:00] He had a run on a show called Love and Marriage, and he did voiceover in lots of the Dr. Who podcasts. Nice. He also did voiceover for Final Fantasy XIV.
He was in a miniseries called Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. And he has a long Oh, you know that? Yeah, I haven’t watched it. I’ve heard of it. And he had a long run on a series called Dickensian. Final Fantasy XVI, which he does voiceover with. And lots of other miniseries. The guy was like a miniseries King.
Anna McKenna Bruce plays Adelaide, the little girl. She’s the little sister of Mia McKenna Bruce, who was known for such films as how to have sex and the last train to Christmas and an episode of Witcher. So her sister has done a considerable amount. And five episodes of Eastenders Anya has been in 18 projects, including several spinoffs or several episodes of sense eight since with the eight at the [00:21:00] end, and a series called cleaning up.
She’s been in four total full length films. That’s pretty good for her age. Yeah. Now I don’t quite get this. Sean Harris plays Harry Reid, which is. The name they gave to Harry price, they changed his name for some reason. Although like all of the comments that I saw about this, they knew who he was right away.
So I don’t know why they bother changing his name, but maybe like the estate had some kind of rule or something.
Stephen: Yeah. Just be safe.
Rhys: Yeah. He was born in London in 1966. He’s been in 65 projects. Lots of TV series. His first full length film being the discovery of heaven in 2001. He was in Smith’s film creep.
He was in John link, John Lynch’s isolation the red writing movie series Harry Brown, which [00:22:00] Michael Caine, I wasn’t a big fan of that film, but he was in Prometheus.
He had a long run on the series, the Borgias. He was in Deliver Us From Evil the 2015 Macbeth. He plays Solomon Lane in the current Mission Impossible series.
Stephen: Oh man. Yeah. Now that you said it click. Yeah.
Rhys: Yeah.
Stephen: That’s a good part. I liked that character.
Rhys: He was in a really bizarre indie called possum, which we’ll put on a list someday. He was in the king and he was in the green night and he has an upcoming film called the wizards with an exclamation mark at the end.
So nice. John Lynch. And no, not that John Lynch. This is the actor, John Lynch. He plays Bishop Malachi. He was born in Coruscant go in Northern Ireland in 1961. His sister, Susan has been in a ton of projects. She was in from hell. She was married to a documentarian named Mary [00:23:00] McGill McGuckien.
But John has been in 89 projects, including Christopher Smith, the black death with, I think Sean beans. It stars in that. Does Sean Bean die? It depends on which ending you watch. Oh nice, okay. It’s got an alternate ending one he dies, one he doesn’t. He started with a film called Cal in 1984.
He was in the secret garden, in the name of the father. And in that other John Lynch’s movie isolation he had a long run on a series called the fall and a longer run on a series called tin star and one called the terror. He’s also in the film, the boys from County hell and Ishana shamelands, the watchers, which has been floated about here lately.
Yeah. Yeah. It actually interests me far more than her father’s movie. The trap. Yeah. Which I really don’t have any desire to go watch, but her movie looks good. [00:24:00] So, so yeah, in general, I think the rest of the stuff that I have issue with, I’ll just do in the description as we go.
Stephen: Okay. Yeah. So there you go now time for a drink and here we go with the movie.
Rhys: Yeah. This is the shutter original film. They tell you right up front. But they don’t tell you that it’s based on a true story. It starts with these ominous sounds and the turning of pages in this ancient Bible. The Bible’s been defaced. And the priest starts reading from the King James Version of Thessalonians 1, Chapter 4.
He’s taking the text verbatim, literally, and misinterpreting the whole thing. To mean that you should not have sex which really isn’t the gist of the thing. It’s you shouldn’t be doing. Abhorrent things outside of your acceptable relationship with your partner is what it’s talking about.
Stephen: Yeah. But he really takes it to the
Rhys: extreme throughout the movie. [00:25:00] So this is one of the issues that I have with this film. The guy would either be an Anglican priest or he would be a Catholic priest.
Yeah.
It’s hard to say which, cause both are structured very, the similarly they’re in England, Anglicans can marry at any point in time, they’re clergy.
That’s not a thing. They don’t have to sit there and be like, Oh, I have to be chest. Because you don’t, you’re allowed to get married as an Anglican priest and Catholics. If you are married beforehand, you’re welcome to stay married as a priest. You can have married priests. And
Stephen: he’s not even a full priest, he’s just the vicar and they made this whole marriage sex thing seem important, but then it really didn’t seem to be important as the movie went on is why I wasn’t quite sure
I
Rhys: think I’m stretching and making excuses for them, but I think it was the [00:26:00] importance of the ghosts who haunt the place.
Yeah. And they were projecting that on the people who lived there.
Stephen: Okay. I can see that.
Rhys: Yeah. That’s the best I could do.
Stephen: Yeah, I could see that, but it was one of those that I questioned, maybe some things got cut that would have helped make that clearer. Or maybe if I watched it four or five more times, but,
Rhys: or actually add something to it.
Oh yeah. See the ghost influence on like the way they’re thinking. Yeah. He hears footsteps above him. He heads out into the hallway and hears all these sexy noises. He opens this door and finds himself. Assaulting someone on the bed the phone rings and everything that was happening on the bed is just gone.
And he’s just standing there in the room. And
Stephen: it’s not just assaulting it’s stabbing blood. And I loved this every time someone sees something throughout the movie, they stand there and they just watch it. And I’m like, wow, that’s an interesting reaction to these scenes, grisly scenes going [00:27:00] on.
Rhys: It’s that is, it’s just such a Christopher Smith way to start a movie.
Yeah. Yeah. Like you’re watching yourself, what the hell’s going on? And you know what? I’ll get to you and I’ll tell you what’s going on, but you got to wait for me in my time.
Stephen: A lot, wait a lot.
Rhys: So then we get a shot outside. This is car pulls up. Someone runs out of the house saying he didn’t know who else to call.
It’s the doctor who comes running out and out comes Bishop Malachi who comes inside and goes upstairs and he gets to the bedroom and the vicar has hung himself in the room and there’s this dead woman’s body lying on the bed. He’s covered in her blood. And the doctor, Dr. Sutter, he comes into play later in the film, but it’s interesting that.
You have Sutter and Malachi both at the site of the first time this happened.
Stephen: Yes, and I love Malachi’s reaction. He’s just so matter of fact and calm about it. And I love that they use [00:28:00] Malachi because you watch Children of the Corn. That’s a major possessed character in that whole series.
Rhys: It is. And then you get the title card. Oh Malachi is lead up what you can and burn the rest. Yeah,
Stephen: which right away makes you suspect him for something. You’re not sure why, but he’s not right.
Rhys: It’s like I’m watching Game of Thrones all over again. Yeah, just burn the bodies. So the title card pops up the banishing.
And then we have this other perfectly Christopher Smith scene, it cuts from that to flamenco music being played on a record player, and we have Harry Reid dancing with some woman like flamenco style into the upstairs of some crappy rundown room, and then it fades, that scene fades out and you’re like
Stephen: What just happened?
That was like the world’s most uncomfortable dance ever. Oh yeah. I’m watching it going, like you said, [00:29:00] What am I watching? They’re not looking at each other, they don’t seem to be enjoying it. It doesn’t seem like a lesson. It’s what the heck is this? Technically precise
Rhys: void of any kind of soul. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. Which is, what dancing’s all about. And I have in my notes, I’m like, Christopher Smith is good with these atmospheric, enigmatic openings. That is like his calling card. And here he introduces us to two major secondary characters. But he doesn’t tell you who they are or why you should care.
You’ll just find out later when he’s ready to tell you.
Stephen: Yep. And then we follow the most uncomfortable dance to the most uncomfortable married couple. Yeah.
Rhys: Cause you have this car pulling up. Copy comes across the screen and tells us it’s been three years. Adelaide and Marianne are the two in the car, mother and daughter.
Marianne has this porcelain doll she’s playing with and the [00:30:00] driver up front seems to be checking out. Adelaide in the back. He’s like looking at her and she notes, but she doesn’t care. She’s not interested in this guy at all. And that’s like the end of the flirtation there. And they get to this place where they get out of the vehicle and you have this big building.
And this is one of my issues I have with Smith in this film. He does not ever go through and give us a good architectural Establishing shot in a good movie, especially one where like you have the haunted house and the house is almost a character you should almost be able to map the place out and he never does that.
This is always confusing. I don’t know. What’s this hallway we’re coming in. Where’s this room? What’s this conservatory in the back? I don’t know.
Stephen: He uses that. For some of the confusion as to what’s real, what’s not, I think, because even though we got to see the whole ship on [00:31:00] triangle, it was still trying to figure out walking this way is going to lead to where, I think
Rhys: I would have appreciated it if he had done it for the upstairs and then left the downstairs, like the basement and the sub basement.
In the bizarre, mysterious maze like thing that it was at the end.
Stephen: And that’s just one of those things that makes it different from a 55 million dollar big screen movie as opposed to a 10 million dollar streaming movie.
Rhys: And that’s a good point. It could completely have been budget driven.
Yeah. But that was just one of the things where I’m like, Yeah, I would have liked to have known my way around the building better. Um, the vicar comes out and he hugs Marianne and he says hi to Adelaide and she’s just like awestruck by the entire structure and goes in without saying a word.
And this is Linus welcome Linus to the extravaganza. They’re explaining, exchanging pleasantries inside the house. Linus is obviously quite taken with her, [00:32:00] with Marianne, but She points out that she’s happy she could be there and she should be there because they’re married.
Stephen: Yeah, I’d like to have somebody point out at what point can you really tell they’re married other than her saying that.
Throughout the whole movie.
Rhys: Yeah. Linus seems content to continue with the bizarre relationship that they’ve had so far. Just they happen to be living under the same roof. And Marianne doesn’t seem to want that. She seems to actually want to have a relationship a spouse you can see and we mentioned this in the triangle, he was influenced by the shining and you can see that influence with some of the shots. Where you like, they’re low going down the hallway kind of thing. It’s very Danny on a big wheel kind of deal.
Stephen: Yeah, I can see that.
Rhys: Yeah.
Adelaide is in her room and she has in her room, thank goodness. Cause it’s a haunted house story. The creepiest collection of dolls [00:33:00] ever. Hey, we have a personal and face doll with no eyes and three creepy monk dolls.
Stephen: Wow. These don’t look anything like cult
Rhys: figures. Yeah. We find out that the church has been struggling ever since the previous vicar left the country.
Stephen: Yeah, that’s crazy. Someone dies and gets stabbed. Nobody wants to come.
Rhys: And that’s the story that is told to Linus is that the vicar and his wife, the previous one, left the country in our, in Australia or something like that.
Stephen: It’s almost not lying.
Rhys: Almost, yes. If Australia happens to be in a box in a hole in the ground back there.
If
Stephen: they didn’t add that part, if they just said he left the country. Unless he’s buried, actually, you’re right that he didn’t leave.
Rhys: Bishop Malachi expects Linus to be able to bring the community back to the church. And we see in this scene that Linus [00:34:00] literally won’t even kiss his wife.
Yeah.
So like leans in for a kiss and he’s Oh, and off he walks. It’s one of those kinds of things where it almost would make you wonder if he’s just gay.
Stephen: Yeah. Covering it up to be in the church. Yeah.
Rhys: Yeah.
Stephen: It didn’t have that type of field of the movie that would have really been distracting. As I’m saying
Rhys: it
Stephen: out
Rhys: loud, I’m like, Wow, it does seem like maybe he was just, yeah, he’s more married
Stephen: to the church.
Rhys: Yeah, they’re praying over this meal. It’s a very nicely framed shot as the whole family sitting down at the table. Linus corrects Adelaide’s impatience to eat. She needs to wait. She apologizes. And he’s no, it’s okay. You didn’t know which is almost a jab at Marianne. Like you should have taught this girl how to behave.
Stephen: See, I started picking up here wondering if the little girl was actually hers from a previous marriage or something that he really didn’t want her. But then the mother. I had some weird things too. I’m like, is [00:35:00] this girl? Like they picked her up off the street or something, it was very questionable is how is this family unit together?
Rhys: Yeah. And it does get more confusing before it gets clearer.
Stephen: Yeah. Oh yeah. And clear is relative.
Rhys: Yeah. After dinner Adelaide’s going to bed and Marianne’s helping put her toys away. One of the dolls she is tightly tucked in. She informs her she’s blind cause she doesn’t have any eyes. And then there are these three creepy Monk dolls that surround the late, the blind doll on the bed.
Marianne asked Adelaide who they are and she says she doesn’t know because the dolls won’t, the dolls won’t tell me, mommy. Yes.
Stephen: Those are really creepies in that scene looking at him around the bed. You wait, you’re just waiting for him to start stabbing.
Rhys: If it had been me, those things would have been gone five minutes after that girl fell asleep.
Stephen: Oh, look! A giraffe outside the window!
Rhys: Yep. Especially in a house where I have wood burning heat. [00:36:00] Those things would have been just up the chimney.
Marianne heads back to her bedroom. She starts to Get undressed. And again, like the phantom carriage suddenly just in odd, how long it takes to take those old clothes off. There’s like all of these straps and ties Linus shows up and she asks him to unbutton the back of her dress. He’s super awkward about the whole thing.
And he turns away once it’s done. And she’s Hey, like you’re my husband. And he’s Oh no. And off he walks he says he needs time. He doesn’t actually leave. She’s fine, take time. And she leaves the room. She was like, I’m out.
Stephen: And again, you start wondering when they got together and how, it’s a lot of confusing dynamics going on in the family.
Rhys: Yeah. So he decides to turn to the Bible for inspiration, just Thessalonians one chapter four and begins to read it out loud. He
Stephen: should have used his finger to follow along. That’s,
Rhys: [00:37:00] yeah, she’s in a room, she’s in another room. She’s brushing her hair and she hears this noise behind her and someone is watching her through a hole in the wall.
Yeah,
Stephen: here’s good. Mr. Smith type of thing right now.
Rhys: Absolutely. She sees like the person watching her. Is in this hallway with tiled ceramic, like an old hospital look.
Stephen: Asylum is what I picked up.
Rhys: Yeah. And she’s wearing like a gown. She looks dazed and then Marianne sees the spy hole and looking through it, she sees herself looking in the mirror at herself, brushing the hair.
So it’s. Not quite as confusing as I’m making it sound, because I can’t seem to describe it.
Stephen: No, it is as confusing as you think.
Rhys: I suppose. If you watch the whole movie, it turns out [00:38:00] that Marianne was hospitalized for being crazy while she was pregnant.
Stephen: Which both will get you put in an asylum at the time.
Sure. And if you’re a woman, but if you’re pregnant without being married in that, what they did, they’d ship them off to the asylum to have the baby. So that made me question, when did they get married? And if she went to the, this asylum for the baby, then who’s the girl they have? Cause she wouldn’t have kept the baby in that situation based on, the time period.
Rhys: The Catholic church has very, Bad record especially in Ireland of what they would do with women who were having children out of wedlock. Like they would institutionalize them. And then if the children died, we’ve got a hole back here. We just toss them in. Yeah. It wasn’t too far too long ago that like they did excavation and they’re like, Oh my gosh, there’s all of these bodies back here.
Rate, the person who was watching her brush her hair is herself while she was in the asylum in the past. [00:39:00] Okay. Yeah. It is confusing. No matter how you say it, whether you jump to the end or not the next day, obviously they’re having conversation about this. Linus is saying it’s mice or rats and Adelaide’s I heard voices too.
And Linus was like, you didn’t hear anything. Shut up. He’s not quite that gruff, but he does snap at her on occasion.
Stephen: Yeah, he’s definitely the guy that would bring people back to the church with his warm, friendly manner.
Rhys: Oh, yeah, for sure. Far more fire and brimstone than the actual teachings of Christ.
Stephen: We just need a little bit more of self flagellation in this movie, and it would have been perfect.
Rhys: Yeah. Betsy, their housekeeper, is deaf. She’s local. Oh. She’s got a pendant around her neck. Adelaide is like, Hey, I’ve seen that in my room. And Linus is can I see that? And he’s I don’t want you wearing this heathen thing anymore.
And he asked Marianne and Adelaide if they want to go into town to watch a film. Frank will tell it, we’ll take them.
Stephen: So that whole thing with the pendant and that, and the little girl saying, Oh, it’s in my room and his reaction to it. I was [00:40:00] like, is it because it’s pagan or is it because he knows something about the house?
It was again, left a lot of questions after that scene.
Rhys: It did. And this is one of those things that, we’re always talking about, could it use more clarification? It would have been cool to see like this pendant has been protecting Betsy her entire life while she’s worked here. And it’s the ghost that’s telling Linus to make her get rid of it.
Stephen: Yeah, exactly. His reaction was very strong considering that he’s had to have seen it before.
Rhys: Yeah. Again, that’s us covering up for a mistake in the story that could have been cleared, clarified. Yeah. If they’d have put more. Marianne tells Betsy, Hey, I like your necklace. So they go to the movie theater, they’re watching a newsreel, and it’s talking about how Hitler has marched into Austria.
And so now we actually have a real date when this happened and it lets us know which Disney movie she’s watching too.
Stephen: Yes. They said Disney. I’m like, Oh, so what [00:41:00] time period is this?
Rhys: It would be the first full length animated film, which is Snow White. And the seven doors, it premiered in England on March 4th of 1938, which I think is two months after Hitler marches into Austria, was it?
Stephen: Yeah, it sounds right. Yeah.
Rhys: So it really, just that off the cuff thing just suddenly tied everything together.
Stephen: Oh, I was just gonna say, the one thing that really struck me on this scene is the little girl’s reaction. I never thought about that when they have all those newsreels that they used to do before the movies.
Here you are, you get to see a Buck Rogers serial, you get to see a crazy cartoon, and now let’s show you this crazy guy with war. Kids probably were devastated, and in fact, that explains the boomer generation a whole lot.
Rhys: But the other thing that I think that they did very poorly in this film, is they tried to lace A political message through it.[00:42:00]
And it’s not one that I’d necessarily disagree with, but it was just so poorly done.
Stephen: I didn’t even really even pick up on that. So yeah, poorly done. It must’ve been, yeah,
Rhys: It’s the whole, and this is a much bigger thing in England than it is for us, but it’s the whole Chamberlain versus Churchill appeasement versus war theme they introduced right here.
It was like, Oh, Hitler’s marched into Austria and England wasn’t involved at the time. And Chamberlain was all about, eh, okay, you can have Austria. What do we care? It’s a long ways away. And there was like this debate in country. It’s should we be involved in this or shouldn’t we be involved with this?
And I think that it’s so sporadically sprinkled throughout that. Yeah. If you’re going to include it as like a thing. Make it a thing.
Stephen: Yeah. [00:43:00] Yeah.
Rhys: Yeah. As the two leave the theater, Harry Reid is out there smoking a cigarette very dangerously off in the distance by himself. He’s watching them leave the cinema.
The man in the square is asking people. He’s got a flyer. He’s asking people for help for the war effort. They’re looking for recyclables. Frank comes up to them and asks if they’re ready to go home, and Marianne says they are. And surely we’ve got some spare iron lying around the house that we could donate to help the war effort.
But what she doesn’t know is, like a sociopath, Linus is on the other side of the square secretly watching them. And I’m like, dude.
Stephen: It’s just, it’s not, I don’t know. They didn’t, this really wasn’t, I, question who’s possessed here in this movie, because it seems like multiple people have been possessed already.
All the way, including Malachi with the way he acted almost, so I [00:44:00] really was questioning Linus’s reaction to his family and everything.
Rhys: I think honestly, the only people who reside in the house who don’t end up possessed are Marianne. And Betsy.
Yeah.
Yeah. Linus is in the church. He’s lighting candles.
He’s practicing his sermon by saying it out loud. And he’s pushing the appeasement thing. War and hatred is a sin. We shouldn’t be fighting against each other. We’re sinning. And this blurry figure appears in the background and it’s Harriet Reid. And Harry is like, Hey, I fought in world war one, which the actual Harry price did fight in world war one.
He was stationed aboard a ship. I believe he, he did several tours on a ship before he ended up on land. So he was in world war one and the guy, guys, like all my buddies who died, were they all sinners then? And Linus is like The church is close.[00:45:00]
I don’t want to have this conversation. The church is closed.
Stephen: Yeah. Crazy calling people out on what they believe in a pointing out the flaws, how that changes things. Glad things have changed so much.
Rhys: Huh. Yeah. Harry’s I don’t think the church should be closed. Why would you close the church? And then he starts to put out the candles that light is just lit.
That is a dick move. Cause he’s got a hundred candles, the light,
Stephen: especially in the church. Cause they’re representative of the prayers, putting them out. It’s like pulling coins out of a wishing well.
Rhys: He’s he slept and crapped on the graves of 10, 000 men while he was in World War I.
And it’s probably a legitimate thing because in World War I, everybody stayed where they were and just killed each other. It’s not like they were running around. He points out that if Linus had fought in the war, he might not have been so quick to judge and then calls him out by name, which really disturbs Linus because he’s like, how the hell do you know my name?
Harry, because a
Stephen: small town like that would [00:46:00] not have spread word about the new vicar moving in after the old one left the country.
Rhys: I think the way it’s depicted in the film, you’re right. But Essex is actually a pretty big city in England, so it would actually at the time have been a legitimate concern because it wouldn’t have been nearly as remote as everybody as it is depicted in the film,
Stephen: right?
Yeah.
Rhys: So Harry’s I know lots of things, lots of forgetting things, and he’s got this book of history of the Manassian order, an offshoot of the Augustinian monks. Who used the black cannon, this is all gobbledygook. There is no Manassian order. That’s not a thing. It’s a last name.
Stephen: Oh, you’re spreading misinformation.
Rhys: There were, there are, it’s an Augustinian branch to monastic orders. But Manassian is just not a thing.
Stephen: Hence the based on. Part. Yeah,
Rhys: there you [00:47:00] go. The house sits on the site of an ancient monastery that burnt down long ago. And there’s a reason Malachi brought you here, Linus says. And then he goes on.
He’s have you heard voices, temptations, or is the house playing tricks with your wife’s mind? And Linus is I’m going to kick you out. And he throws him out and then proceeds to not be able to close the door. As Harry keeps talking to him, putting his foot in the door. And he tells Linus of a tomb near the house where the two new bodies were put in it three years ago.
And it’s cared for by the church. And it’s the bodies of Beatrice and Stanley Hall. Linus is they’re out of the country. And he’s no, Beatrice lost her mind and whored around town. And that’s why her husband killed her. And then we cut to Adelaide having a tea party in her bedroom.
Stephen: Yes. At least we’re starting to get a few answers.
Rhys: Yes. Maybe. And she is doing that thing that little kids do that’s super creepy. She’s talking to her dolls like they’re talking back to her.
Stephen: Oh, yeah. I wouldn’t say I think it’s even super [00:48:00] creepier here. She’s just the doll without eyes, let’s just, and the monks that look like cult figures.
Rhys: Yeah. Her mom’s watching from the doorway and she’s Oh, can we play together? And the girls looks to the three creepy hooded dolls that I would have burnt up and never really answers her mom. Yeah. Yeah.
Stephen: I, oh, is the little girl getting possessed at this point?
Rhys: Yes. The priest goes out in the woods to look for a tomb, and he finds there’s a gate that leads to a hole in the ground that’s all chained up.
Huh. That’s odd. And then mom and daughter are playing this game in the hallway called What’s the Time, Mr. Wolf? I wasn’t familiar with this, but apparently it is an actual children’s game.
Stephen: It’s basically red light, green light is what it
Rhys: looks like. Yes. That’s the American version of it, yes.
You creep up on the person behind you and they turn around and then when it gets to, I think when it gets to noon, what’s the time, Mr. Wolf, when they turn around and say noon, they chase after you and whoever gets tagged as the next wolf.
Stephen: And my comment [00:49:00] was, Oh, playing a hide your face game in a horror movie.
That never goes bad.
Rhys: Yeah. And then she turns around and the girl’s gone. Like the, so the gist is the girl walks down the hall. And she goes, what’s the time, Mr. Wolf? And then her mom, who’s facing the other direction, says, it’s two o’clock. And then the girl, she turns around and looks, and then she turns back.
And the girl goes a little closer. What’s the time, Mr. Wolf? And then, eventually mom turns around and the girl’s just missing. So she goes to the basement to look for her. Because, yeah. And the basement isn’t just a basement, it’s like a basement and then like hallways and tunnels and stuff all over the place.
She’s got a flashlight and she’s looking around and there’s this covered mirror in one corner. And then the little girl comes up and jump scares us all. Yeah. She’s staring into her reflection in the mirror and it seems a little odd, a little off maybe. When they turn to leave, [00:50:00] that the figure in the mirror stays there, like you have in creepy mirror horror movies.
Stephen: Yeah. It’s pretty typical. If you have to put a mirror in the scene, dominant, that’s probably what’s going to happen. Oculus.
Rhys: If you have not seen it or if our viewers haven’t seen it, Oculus is a good haunted mirror movie. It stars Karen Gillian.
Yeah,
It’s a pretty good one. Linus is listening to the radio.
It gives us some historic information about Hitler marching into Austria and Britain’s response. And he comes across the defaced Bible. He brings the Bible back with him to the house. And when he walks in, he finds a Bishop Malachi is there sitting with his wife.
Stephen: Yeah, that’s not creepy.
Rhys: No. And there’s this kind of philosophical thread introduced here.
And it’s the whole thing about appeasement versus involvement in the war again. Just really wasn’t done. You were going to make it a thing, then make it [00:51:00] a thing. If not, then just cut it
Stephen: and Linus, his character. I, the whole time I’m trying to figure him out because he seems very much a torn man.
He’s getting, bossed around by Malachi and he’s a little, he wants, he’s, a little simpering about it. Oh, okay. But he also seemed almost a little, upset or whatever. And he’s definitely at odds with his wife. He’s snapping at the kid. I, his whole character was like, what exactly is going on with this guy?
Rhys: Yeah. I do want to take a second to bring up three other people on cast. Or crew actually, Ben Baird was the sound designer. The sound design here work is very good in this film. Yeah. And Laura just saying was the Foley artist. A great job with, Converting sounds and marrying them up with what’s on screen.
And the music was by, I think it’s a duo called toy drum. But I thought the music was pretty good. It was there, it was atmospheric. It [00:52:00] wasn’t invasive. It wasn’t overpowering.
Stephen: Yeah. And we always talk about the sound effects and fully working all that and how important it really is. I just took my mother to blossom to see the Indiana Jones with the Cleveland orchestra, and they get a special cut of the film so that doesn’t have the music and the orchestra can play the music and it was very well, it was fantastic, but obviously a lot of the sound effects are on the film.
Line in the movie. So when that got pulled out, most of the sound effects were gone and it really made the movie a little goofy in spots where you didn’t hear people hitting the ground when they fell, you didn’t hear the pow thunks when they fought. A lot of those visual effects were missing and it really stood out and people don’t realize sometimes, just walking or closing a lid.
We hear the Creek, the slam and. To our brain, it’s Oh, I just watched it. That’s the sound that makes, but all that is added in afterwards by somebody because it really doesn’t pick it up that well. And it doesn’t sound that good. And a lot of the effects are not what you think the Grinch that sold [00:53:00] Christmas when he’s walking across the crunchy snow.
The guy who did the sound effects was crunching an apple. Now, like a green apple. Definitely that’s a, an important part to help set the mood for a lot of these movies.
Rhys: And I’ve really gotten hypersensitive. So it was an AVR where like they’ll record the voice. Later, because something happened with the voice take, but the rest of the take was good and you can just hear here’s the, here’s my voice.
And then all of a sudden my voice is and then we go back up here and it’s really subtle, but it’s just oh, wow. And these guys who did this did a great job. I didn’t notice any of that. And the sound effects again, really well done.
Stephen: Yep. And I always advocate, if you’re going to be buying some big TV or whatever, spend some of that money on a good surround sound, something like that.
Because the difference in the movie watching experience is fantastic. The big TV does not matter as much as the sound. And once you hear [00:54:00] it and see the difference, you realize it.
Rhys: Yeah. The Bishop, it turns out has come here to specifically remind Linus what a nice position he’s in. And the fact that, and here’s where we get this background story.
He’s Marianne had Adelaide out of wedlock. The doctor said Adelaide was dead. Marianne knew that wasn’t the case. The doctor institutionalized Marianne saying that she was crazy thinking the baby was alive. She gave birth to the baby. And Malachi convinced the institution to allow Marianne to take Adelaide and they would be married to Linus.
So he’s the architect of this family.
Stephen: Yes, which is finally starting to explain some of the whole dynamics and everything going on. So Linus is really [00:55:00] just a puppet this whole time, everything.
Rhys: And that’s what, that’s how Malachi basically ends the conversation. It’d be a shame if something happened to your nice little store here.
Stephen: We should be an Italian mafia guy. As it started reminded me of.
Rhys: Yeah. We cut to Harry drinking in a pub and then we’re back at dinner. Boom, boom. During dinner, Marianne says, the Bishop shouldn’t get to Linus. And he’s just it’s none of your business. You’re a woman. What do you know? And there’s that kind of social class thing that’s going on that.
Stephen: I’d love to to be there like the fly on the wall and have you say that to Shan sometime. I’d love to see that.
Rhys: You don’t know what you’re talking about, woman. Right. She points out that people are collecting metal for the war in Spain. And Linus wants to know what she and Frank were talking about.
And she’s what? All right. And then Adelaide’s are the bad men on the news going to come and kill us? And Linus is you’re, we’re perfectly safe here on our island. And then [00:56:00] he’s I can’t believe you let her watch that newsreel. What are you supposed to do? Take your kid out and then come back in.
She says she’s already arranged for the recycling to take place and sends Adelaide to her room. And Linus is like, it’s not your stuff to recycle. It’s the churches,
Stephen: right? Because the Catholic church doesn’t have excess of anything.
Rhys: That’s right. Or the Anglican church, whatever this happens to be.
Cause we’ve never really clarified it. Betsy comes in to collect things and he’s just will you stop? We, and she’s deaf, you moron, not looking at your lips. If you’re just going, will you stop? She’s not going to hear you. Which he doesn’t, and then he slams the table and then walks off.
Stephen: See, the whole conflict here, I know, he’s resisting his wife and all that, but this man really needs to get laid.
I’m sorry.
Rhys: It would have been a very different movie.
Stephen: Yeah, they might have cut that part out, who [00:57:00] knows.
Rhys: He tells her that she shouldn’t be hanging around with people in town and like church members, you shouldn’t be hanging out with people in town, like a common. And she’s finish that sentence.
And all of a sudden it’s like Oh, okay. Apparently she’s not the pushover that he thinks she is. He’s you’re my wife. And she’s really? Because a deed is worth more than a word. Linus, the same way a touch is worth more than a look. And I was like, that’s a well written line that encapsulates their relationship very well.
Stephen: Yeah, it definitely had that Victorian era writing feel to it,
Rhys: yeah. Yeah, it did. She’s like walking through the house and she finds Adelaide staring into the mirror and she calls her and Adelaide runs over and again, the Adelaide mirror reflection is still standing there staring into an empty room.
Adelaide is tucking all of her dolls into bed when her mom comes in and points out how clever [00:58:00] she is. The girl has laid everything out like the actual house itself. Again, an establishing shot of the architecture would have made this more of a connection for us. But yeah she turns and looks at this one part and she’s what’s this room?
And Adelaide’s mommy says, you’re not supposed to go there. And Marianne’s I’m your mom. And all of a sudden Adelaide’s no, you’re not my mom. And suddenly it gets really weird where she’s you’re not my mother. You’re not my mother. And they’re screaming and she’s.
Taking her away and, putting her to bed, the scene ends with Marianne getting a drink and looking at herself in the mirror. The mirror thing is just like a theme here, yeah. Then there’s this painting. It like cuts to, and in the painting you have this garden and this maiden walking through the garden and there’s a lion hidden in the brush.
And I’m like, Oh, is that like our analogy for the hidden secret dangers in this house? [00:59:00] She’s sleeping. And as she’s sleeping, this is like a heredity almost where you have things that are happening while the characters asleep to let you know, it’s not all in their head. She’s sleeping as this glass starts to slide across the dresser, which is probably actually one of the things that they said really happened in this crazy haunted house back in the day.
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: So here’s this noise and goes and looks down and Betsy’s in the conservatory working on plants and there’s this hooded monk like figure outside and it’s approaching the door and Marianne’s calling from the window. You’re yelling through two panes of glass to a deaf woman. I don’t know what you’re hoping to accomplish.
By the time Marianne gets to the conservatory, she’s holding Betsy. She sees herself. Holding Betsy whose throat has been slit and she’s screaming for Linus and then Linus comes down the stairs to find Marianne sitting on the floor, cradling and nothing. [01:00:00] It’s all in her head here and he’s Oh, were you sleepwalking or anything like that?
He’s have Betsy clean this up. And then he goes back upstairs like. I’m a total douchebag.
Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s, this is where it really starts getting, okay, are we watching something that’s real or we watch something in their head? Is it a hallucination or a ghost? There’s a lot of that starts happening right now.
Rhys: He says that Marianne and Adelaide should go see a doctor and he tells them it’s just stress. Don’t be concerned. It’s just stress from the move. It’ll all work out. Where are you living? And she’s I’m at Holly Hall. And all of a sudden he’s are you the wife? Because he knows what happened to the last wife in Holly Hall.
So he goes to the pub and he’s talking to Harry. And he’s this shouldn’t be, and all of a sudden the bishop comes in and there’s this back and forth between Malachi and Harry and Malachi is he should be in jail as a fraud because there was some girl who [01:01:00] died or got lost because you were doing something with her.
And Harry’s that’s not a thing. Nobody ever convicted me of that. And he’s he’s just oh, maybe I’ll get the evidence. So you do get your butt thrown in jail.
Stephen: He reminded me in this movie a little bit of a Hellraiser. What’s his name? From DC. Oh, Constantine.
Constantine. Yeah. A little bit.
Rhys: Yeah. I can see him being like a an influence on that series, like the actual character. Yeah, exactly. Malachi tells Dr. Sutter to find a new friend. And Harry points out that Malachi has German contacts. Yes. Again, there’s that thread. It does
Stephen: come back a little bit at the end.
You
Rhys: know,
But that’s the thing. It’s if that was going to be a thing, then make it a thing. Otherwise just leave it out. It’s a distraction. The next day, Linus is reading through this. Book that the Bishop gave him. And it’s basically a book that says Harry’s a horrible person.
And he finds a key. [01:02:00] Harry’s walking home. It looks like he’s still drunk from the night before. And you can see the gray light of Dawn. And here’s the cry of this woman whose daughter got lost in the swamp. And he like walks over and he’s looking over this bridge and he’s Oh, come help you. And, it looks at first, it looks dangerous because you have a drunk guy at a bridge, but it’s not that high and the water’s not that deep.
It’s really not that dangerous. And we’re going to skip the cut to just finish up this thing with Harry. We do see what the danger is because as he continues to walk down the road or car pulls up outcomes, Malachi with his further moth with his mafioso contact as two goons go over and just beat the hell out of Harry.
And the actual history. By the time Harry Harry Price was involved with this, he was such a known figure, this would have never happened. It’s not the kind of thing where like some bishops going to push him around. He was a known entity.
Stephen: Yeah. We’ve already established this bishop [01:03:00] isn’t quite what he seems.
He’s got interior motives going on.
Rhys: Linus has found this key out of nowhere. And it happens to unlock the thing on the tomb the lock on the tomb. So he goes down into the darkness. And, I’m not a big fan of Linus in this story, but at least he does actually investigate things. People say, Mary Ann’s in the kitchen, I don’t know. There’s no establishing shot for the architecture in this building. Yeah, she she’s smoking a cigarette. Betsy comes in and asks if she’s okay. And they had this kind of awkward conversation where Betsy and Marianne both say they’ve been seeing things and it’s a man. And Betsy does this little throat gesture and gives this piece of paper to Marianne.
And it’s got an address. It turns out that it’s a flop house, basically. And Harry Reid is living in the top floor. She comes upstairs to find him smoking while he’s lying on the floor, bleeding everywhere. He’s Oh, I’m [01:04:00] sorry. How British.
Stephen: Sorry. I’m bleeding here.
Rhys: Yeah. She’s about to leave and he tells her he’s I know who you are and I know the things you’ve seen in the house.
Have you seen the monk? And then she gives him this look like, what? And she’s Betsy’s, he’s like, Betsy is the one who contacted him. And then he’s the Manassian order. Believed in punishment for sin. That certainly wouldn’t be unique to them if they were an actual order. Torture would bring them closer to God.
Again, not unique to them. Martyrs. He’s all
Stephen: back.
Rhys: Yeah. He’s got an entire book with wood cuts and everything. And the Manassian order was under your house. Dun.
Stephen: Or is it they are under your house?
Rhys: Yeah. She asked why he’s married to the vicar with a child. And again, that’s not a thing.
And she’s it’s my sister’s child. He’s no, it’s not. The house feeds on lies. It shows other people and it [01:05:00] turns children against their parents and husbands against their wives. And it gets its power from people’s shame. She asks who he is and he asks her the same question back.
No, really. Who are you? When everything closes in on you, will you remember who you are? The shame of the illegitimate child is what is haunting you and will kill you eventually. And he gives her a book and tells her to get out of the house before it’s too late. So she’s got this huge tome. Linus comes home at night.
He hears these sexy noises, and he goes to investigate what it might be, and he turns on this flashlight and heads down into the basement and there’s Frank and Marianne just screwing there in the basement, because, the filthy basement of an 18th century home is where you’re going to go to have sex.
Yeah,
Stephen: turns
Rhys: me
Stephen: on.
Rhys: Once he’s down there, things get a little more odd. He calls out for Marianne and continues into the darkness. And then they just disappear [01:06:00] and he goes back upstairs, he’s shaken, but it doesn’t really change anything else he’s doing. He’s just Oh, I must’ve seen that.
Yeah.
Marianne comes in from the other door. He asks her where she’s been and he accuses her of slinking around town and she’s I don’t owe you anything, Jack. He asked her about the book and he says that Harry’s a fraud and he grabs the book and she doesn’t let go. She just points out that the only thing he’s passionate about is his own jealousy.
Okay. So he goes, Oh, now we’re back in church. This is during the day. He’s preaching to a congregation. I’m guessing about 12 and he’s going through like this, the 12 stages of the cross kind of thing as he’s doing it. And that would make sense because we know the movie released around the mid March, right?
- So it would be about Easter. Mary goes home and we find where she’s hidden the book. [01:07:00] She’s hidden it in a chimney, which is not a great place to store flammable things. People she pulls it out and she opens it up and she’s looking at this wood cut. And then she hears someone coming and she hides it.
Linus shows up. He’s there’s this conversation between them where he tells her she owes him everything. And apparently she was a protestant originally, and she was ill, she says. He points out that she was shamed because she was having an illegitimate child. She ended up in a mental institute. The doctor told her Adelaide had been deceased in the womb and wanted to remove her and she refused.
They declared her insane. It’s this is where we get the backstory that Malachi refers to back in the earlier scene. Linus says he doesn’t want her ever seeing Harry again. She’s never to leave the house and she’s there because he wants her there. And so she’s like a prisoner because she owes him for something that he did a long time ago.
Adelaide is looking into a mirror and the mirror’s on wheels and she just starts [01:08:00] pushing it away. So we cut to Marianne walking through the house, calling for her. She walks right past the mirror and then comes back and looks into the room adjacent to it. And it’s dark. So she grabs a flashlight and turns it on.
There’s a set of stairs, which head down to the basement. And you have these vaulted halls of this mythical burnt down monastery that really didn’t exist, It makes for good cinema.
Stephen: Yeah, it did.
Rhys: She hears Adelaide calling out to her and she starts following her voice down the hall and she comes to this set of bars and she’s looking through it with a flashlight and there’s voices bouncing everywhere.
And Adelaide saying, no, I don’t want it. She opens the door only to hear Adelaide scream in the distance somewhere. You can hear her say something about Marianne and you’re my mommy and then say no, and Adelaide turns the corner and finds herself. It, this narrow brick hallway, her flashlight cuts across this woman, whose eyes are bandaged.
And then the figure disappears. Just this little jump scare there for you. [01:09:00] It’s really quick. You have to pause it. And if you pause it, you can see that she’s got bandage across her eyes and they’re bloody where her eyes used to be. It was very quick. Yeah. Adelaide’s in the distance saying, make her go away, please.
The next thing we know it’s nighttime. We don’t know what happened with that. There’s no resolution to that old scene.
Stephen: Yeah, it’s pretty typical, it seems, of some of these bouncing around time with illusions in your head, hallucinations and crap.
Rhys: Adelaide’s in her bed and Marianne is saying, why don’t you answer me when I called you?
Adelaide says her favorite doll is gone, but the Monk’s dolls are sitting there right next to her bed. Marianne takes the Monk doll. She says she doesn’t want her playing with those anymore. And Adelaide then says that mommy says you’re going to take us away from here and that you’re going to leave Linus and Adelaide doesn’t want to leave the house.
Marianne doesn’t even fight with her. She just closes the door. Adelaide turns the light on after she leaves and there are [01:10:00] three full size bunks just standing on the floor where the dolls used to be. Mary Anne’s in the bedroom, bathroom. She’s looking at herself in the mirror and throws up in the sink.
Then she looks into another mirror and sees herself as a very pregnant woman. And a baby’s screaming and she turns on the water to flush the vomit down the sink. And she looks up and everything’s fine again. She’s walking down the hall and at night she sees Adelaide standing there in the hall staring into a mirror.
So this is where we actually get the tie in of, Oh, the person who was looking at Mary Anne through the hole in the wall. So Adelaide is creepily staring into a mirror in the hallway at dark at night and she turns around and gives this little shush gesture and Marianne turns around and sees copies of Marianne.
Standing with her face against the wall, like at various levels so that her feet aren’t even touching the floor.
Stephen: That was weird. That was a unique thing I hadn’t seen before. It wasn’t super scary, but it was cool to see something [01:11:00] that was at least different.
Rhys: Yeah. And then as the camera pulls away, we find out that she is actually one of them.
Like she’s trapped against the wall. And. A woman with bandages across her eyes approaches Adelaide and takes her through the mirror. Not like smashes the mirror, like Alice steps through it. Yeah. Adelaide follows her. And they both step through the mirror. Marianne falls on the floor and she approaches the mirror and she can see the two walking down the hall reflection behind her.
And she turns around. There’s nothing there. She calls for Adelaide and Adelaide turns around and smiles and waves. Bye bye.
Stephen: Maybe they traveled to Japan and she becomes the ring.
Rhys: Yes. There you go. Or she gets trapped in a movie. Yeah. And she gets trapped in a movie somewhere. She goes to Linus.
She needs her, his help. And he’s just sitting in the chair, getting hammered and accusing her of blaming the house on everything.
Stephen: Yeah. See, this is where I think it is Catholic. Cause you’re allowed to get drunk. You just can’t have sex. [01:12:00]
Rhys: Okay. She runs away and goes all the way back to the rental house and she catches Harry as he’s just about to go out.
And she asks if he can help and he’s yes, but we must go into the darkness. And in my notes, I’m like, Harry X Machina, so here we have this problem that you can’t solve. So we’re going to bring in this guy who can solve everything. So then you have Linus walking around the house calling for Betsy and suddenly he gets it.
He’s Oh my God, I’m calling for my deaf made. Can somebody help me find my deaf made? He takes his next drink and behind him over his right shoulder is a monk with his face all scarred up. It doesn’t faze Linus at all. He’s just Hey, have you seen my maid? That was very, the shining. That was very Jack.
Yeah. Harry and Marianne return to the house, everything’s dark, and they find Betsy in the conservatory, her throat has been slit. This one’s for real. For realsies. Harry [01:13:00] lies down on the floor next to her. Not like Niels, like lies down on the floor next to her. He’s what did they do to you? You’re not here anymore.
Goodbye. And he closes her eyes. He’s definitely a weird in this movie, I wonder if that’s how like the other guy, like the real guy was,
Stephen: I’d like to see if this character has been used in other movies or TV shows or something like that. Great idea. Eddie goes into
Rhys: or Eddie Harry goes into the study and finds Linus sitting there saying, clean it up.
He warns Marianne not to get too close. It’s not Linus who killed Betsy. He’s a victim of the house. It’s put him in a trance. She keeps asking him where Adelaide is. Harry says, go get something that was precious to her. And while she’s gone, Harry tells Linus he will clean it up indeed. Marianne goes into Adelaide’s room and the dolls are all seemingly gone, but she finds one hanging by its neck off the table and brings it with him.
I hate it when dolls commit suicide. I know, it’s so [01:14:00] annoying. Harry’s talking to Linus. His eyes are just pure black and in the irises, Harry asks what he sees. And he sees monks torturing a woman who’s on a table. She’s screaming. And then we’re back into Linus’s study. Marianne’s back with the doll and she goes first to Linus and Harry tells her to leave him and then he begins his dissertation about the house.
And he talks about how the house is cursed. Monks tortured and mutilated women in this house. Now a woman that happened to has Adelaide and the ghosts of the monks are coming for her. It’s her. And the ghost of the woman has come for her daughter because the woman lost her daughter. The monks took the child.
And put the baby somewhere in the dark below for it to die and blinded her to hide their shame. And he asks Marianna if she loves her husband, and she says yes, and I don’t know why.
Stephen: I don’t know why she would say yes. Yeah, she never really acted that way the whole movie.
Rhys: Yeah. Then Harry just proceeds to [01:15:00] slap the shit out of
Stephen: Linus.
Rhys: Saying out! The woman has gone, has a child down there in the darkness, and since it died down there, she’s taking Adelaide down to replace the one she lost. And apparently there’s some ritual that that Linus can do that will allow them to enter into this secret realm in the basement. So they head down and Linus starts talking about the crucifixion again.
Apparently that’s the secret thing, the twelve stages of the cross. There’s a doll on the table running by candles, and he snuffs them out again. It’s very atmospheric. But again, I wasn’t scared.
Stephen: Right.
Rhys: It was just like, Oh yeah, this is cool.
Stephen: It’s more of a thriller at times.
Rhys: Yeah. A thriller with ghosts.
Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. Touch of paranormal supernatural stuff.
Rhys: Adelaide’s voice says, mommy, you’re forbidden. You’re not allowed to look. And suddenly Marianne is in the hallway looking at the mirror. She turns around to see herself and [01:16:00] herself runs away from her. So she chases after herself. And she,
Stephen: it is very Atlas and Wonderland.
Rhys: Yeah, she catches up with herself at the bottom of the stairs and you can tell which is an actual vision and which is real because the vision has no sound. There’s not. It’s just quiet.
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: Marianne’s footsteps ring out as she goes down the stairs and the vision is Staring off at the near distance and Marianne stares off in that distance.
And we hear babies cry and now we can hear now she’s finds herself in a nursery full of babies, but the babies are actually all creepy dolls. One more reason to not creepy ceramic face dolls. Again, very silent hill where you have some inanimate object that is imbued with the essence of,
Stephen: right.
Rhys: This whole time, we’re getting voiceover from Malachi saying it was he who got the baby back. And Harry talking about the cursed house. It’s just all this stuff playing [01:17:00] over to refresh your mind about the story, which was confusing. So you know what’s going on. And she turns the corner and Adelaide is playing.
What’s the time, Mr. Wolf. Or she starts to play she finds herself in her white insanity gown that she had when she was in the hospital. And we find this mysterious figure we saw in the mirror earlier was that was looking at her when she walked away was actually her in this gown and she stands there watching herself walk away from the earlier scene in the movie again.
Very Christopher Smith.
Stephen: I really wonder if he has like note cards. On his wall with the different timelines and storylines and moving them around to see how it all flows together.
Rhys: You’d almost have to,
Stephen: yeah, something or just say, yeah, what do I care if it’s confusing and I miss a few holes and stuff?
And who cares?
Rhys: Yeah All of a sudden we see the monks torturing some woman on the table and the [01:18:00] camera slowly pushes in and it jumps and we see that the woman is actually Marianne. It’s been her on the table this whole time. And she’s crying. She’s asking for her child and the monk is calling her a sinner and asking her to confess.
And she is like feisty and defiant. She’s I’m a woman and I don’t regret the time I spent with Adelaide’s dad. That wasn’t Linus, by the way. The monk walks away from her, leaving her chain to the table, and he grabs what looks like a meat cleaver, maybe? I don’t know, some slasher film. Scary torture device.
And then he sits there, and he screams about sinning, and he takes the meat cleaver to his own face. That got her. Yeah. Yeah. That shows her. It’s screaming about the sins of the flesh and Marianne says she’s not going to hide in shame. She doesn’t feel shame and she’s not going to mutilate herself like they are.
And I guess that’s might be a theme to the film. I don’t know. Maybe. Yeah. Except who you [01:19:00] are for who you are and what you’ve done. Cause we need that with horror movies. She says she pities them. And now all of a sudden she’s back in the tunnels. Everything’s lit up with red lights and she asks for her daughter back.
And she does. As she does, all the red lights turn off and she grabs a flashlight and heads off in the darkness. There’s a whole lot of just running around in the dark in this movie.
Stephen: I was waiting for the Scooby Doo theme to start playing.
Rhys: She’s moving along. You see this blindfolded woman telling Adelaide to hush.
Oh my God, I’m reading through my notes and the next sentence says, there’s the whole, as you pass us, we’re going to slip behind you vaguely Scooby Doo type treatment.
That’s awesome. Marianne suddenly stops and she’s what’s the time, Mr. Wolf? And Adelaide says three o’clock and they’re basically just playing the game. Instead of. Adelaide asking the time it’s Marianne, she [01:20:00] turns the corner to find Adelaide standing next to the blinded woman. And it’s all creepy and atmospheric, but again, not scary.
You feel bad for the ghost. If anything, Marianne speaks to the ghost and says, I’ll see to it that you and your child get a proper burial. She goes on to tell them that it’s much more than they, they deserve so much more. And this is a very Western civilization treatment of a ghost, right? This was.
Like something that started way back in the feudal days where we always think that there’s a ghost. There must be some reason. And if you can fix the reason the ghost goes away,
you
head to the east and that’s not it at all. Ghosts are just a thing and they’re just mad. And there’s nothing you can do to make them happy.
Stephen: Right, which made the crow mythology interesting because it took a little bit from Native Americans and it was very much, Japanese, Asian type culture with that, that, it was different.
Rhys: Yeah, a Marianne squats on the floor like she’s working with a scared dog or [01:21:00] something. And the men blunder around the corner.
Somehow they got there now to this mysterious, magical place. She stops them and says, just let them play. And Linus can see what she’s seeing. He can’t really deny it anymore. And then suddenly we cut to the outside. Harry and Linus are lowering a small coffin into the dirt. Adelaide’s can she have my doll?
And Linus jumps in and opens the coffin and drops the doll in and climbs out and they bury it. Linus says a few words. Everyone stands around solemnly. And they even you want to talk about a massive plot hole, they just so happened to have a cross that says mother and daughter already there.
I’m pretty sure I would have taken a while to make, but okay. And then suddenly we cut to the dark and there are two gentlemen digging up the grave that we just saw buried. They pull out the bones. And it looks like a member of the clergy is taking the bones [01:22:00] away. Oh, look, it’s. Bishop Malachi, and he’s in Stuttgart, Germany.
And he’s giving them to his Nazi friends. Oh, he really was a bad guy all along. There’s that political theme, do something with it or not. But yeah, it seemed pointless,
Stephen: but I was like, wow, I really would have loved a little bit more of the paranormal hunt that Hitler was on. Yes. We talked about that with the.
The nun with the whole the creatures and stuff, right? If you were going to do it,
Rhys: then do it, man. Jump into it with both feet.
Stephen: Hey, something that popped into my mind in the triangle, wasn’t that main character Marianne also in my confusing movies in the past? I’ll have to look it up for sure. I was going to say I could look it up.
I don’t remember. We’ll look it up and make a note or something.
Rhys: Yeah. So the Nazis have always had this fascination with. [01:23:00] Supernatural stuff. Like legitimately, like we said in the nun, they like went to this place cause it was haunted to harness the power of the supernatural.
Stephen: That was the whole basis of Indiana Jones four.
Rhys: Indiana Jones one really?
Stephen: Yeah. One. You’re right. Yeah. That one too. One and four.
Rhys: Yeah. So we’re back in the church service there’s way more people in the congregation and now all of a sudden Linus’s message of appeasement has changed to, no, we have to stand up for what’s right and face evil head on.
And it’s so now he’s come around and we have to stop fascism and you roll credits. Again, turning the credits, there is this very creepy song sung by a child in German.
Stephen: Yeah, that was weird.
Rhys: But, that, that is The Banishing. It’s a little bit of a mess of a movie. It’s well made. It’s well directed.
The acting’s all good. I just didn’t find it scary. I am floored by the fact that it was based on a real story. [01:24:00] Yeah. And no one ever said that.
Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. It was, like, again, for streaming, especially on Shudder. It was great. If I saw it in the theater, mission impossible this week, the banishing I’ve been like, eh, could have done without it in the theater.
Rhys: I’m going through the whole HBO movies. I’ve missed thing. And I’ve seen, I’ve watched way worse than this. Oh, I’ve been doing it for sure.
Stephen: Yeah. Hammer films, Dr. Tornos, Vampire Hunter. That’s the one that I always laugh at.
Rhys: Yeah. So it’s not, It’s not a horrible movie. And again, you could show this to kids.
Yeah. There’s really no nudity. There’s very little swearing. There’s no gore so much.
Stephen: A little blood it’s atmospheric. No, yeah.
Rhys: But I don’t know that kids would enjoy it or they’d walk away going. What did we just watch?
Stephen: I did that a couple times christopher smith. Yeah, there you go. We’ll see what he comes up with next Yeah.[01:25:00]
All right. So there’s the banishing. What’s for the next time reese? The next
Rhys: time we’re going to look at the works of craig wallace Who was a major director during todd and the book of pure evil We’re doing something completely different because he did a full length film called motherly
Stephen: motherly.
Sounds interesting. Cause Todd was definitely a fun, good one. We’ll see what the difference is there. Yes. All right. Hey, it’s been great. It’s been fun. So we’ll catch you next time.
Rhys: All right. Take care.
