The Banishing (2020)
The Banishing is a 2020 British gothic horror film set in 1930s England, where a young reverend, his wife, and his daughter move into a manor with a dark secret. As strange and frightening events begin to unfold, the family discovers that the house’s history is tied to sinister forces and hidden truths. They are forced to confront supernatural threats and the Church’s secrets as the danger to their daughter grows.
Narrative Score
Full Plot & Ending Explained
Intro
In 1935 in England, a vicar at Morley Hall murders his wife in a jealous rage and then kills himself, while Bishop Malachi helps conceal the crime by ordering the town physician to cover it up. Three years later, in 1938, the new vicar Linus Forster moves into Morley Hall with his wife Marianne and her young daughter Adelaide, who is actually Marianne’s illegitimate child and is passed off as her niece.
Turning Point 1
From the start, Linus’s faith is rigid and joyless, especially in his marriage, because he believes sex for pleasure is sinful and grows suspicious that Marianne will betray him. Adelaide begins seeing eerie monk-like dolls and invisible figures, while the house’s mirrors reflect people with a delay, and Marianne starts having visions of shadowy presences and a premonition of the violent death of the deaf housekeeper Betsy.
Turning Point 2
Marianne’s own history becomes part of the haunting when she remembers being locked in a mental asylum during her pregnancy, and the house seems to exploit that trauma. The occult investigator Harry Reed, who has studied Morley Hall’s dark past, warns Linus that the property once stood on the site of a monastery of the Minassian Order, where cruel rituals and torture were used against sinners.
Turning Point 3
Bishop Malachi tries to silence Harry after Harry publicly accuses him of Nazi sympathies, and Malachi has Harry beaten by two men under his command. Encouraged by Betsy, Marianne meets the injured Harry anyway, and Harry tells her the house is turning the family against one another; he also reveals that the church’s story about Adelaide is a lie and that Marianne’s daughter will be especially vulnerable because she was born out of wedlock.
Turning Point 4
Back at Morley Hall, Linus investigates the former vicar’s disappearance and learns Malachi lied to him about the previous family having moved to Australia. The house then intensifies its attacks: Linus has a supernatural vision of Marianne committing adultery, grows furious when he learns she visited Harry, and the family’s distrust deepens just as Malachi visits Marianne and confirms that he knows Adelaide is illegitimate and that Marianne once lost the child while institutionalized.
Turning Point 5
After Malachi’s intrusion and the escalating supernatural pressure, Adelaide goes missing, forcing Marianne to seek help from the drunken and disoriented Linus with no success. She then turns to Harry Reed, who agrees to help, and the search exposes that the evil presence in the house is not merely psychological but tied to a deliberate, long-buried corruption around the church and the property.
Ending
Marianne, Linus, and Harry confront the malign force linked to Morley Hall’s history and the church’s cover-up, and the final struggle centers on saving Adelaide from the entity that has been feeding on the family’s secrets, shame, and mistrust. The film ends with the house’s haunted legacy laid bare as the characters face the consequences of Malachi’s deception and the destructive force it unleashed.
Cross-checked against Wikipedia and other public film references. View on Letterboxd ↗ The Narrative Score above is an experimental 5-axis rating, not a critic score.