“Why does God allow evil to exist?” asks leading man Linus Forster (John Heffernan), a Catholic priest grappling with the first rumblings of World War 2 in England. A good question. Very topical, very meta. Not one we’ll get an answer to in The Banishing, but not one that has a solid answer anyway, if all the previous tales that wax philosophical on the nature of war and authoritarianism are any indication.

I was very excited to dig into The Banishing when I read that it was “the true story of the most haunted house in England” and set in the 1930s. As a certified (in about one month from now) historian, picking apart true tales of hauntings has long been a passion of mine that I just haven’t gotten the chance to write about. So strap in for a mini-essay, dear reader. This is my niche.

The promised “most haunted house in England” refers to Borley Rectory, built in 1863, destroyed by a fire in 1939, and eventually torn down entirely. However, this is changed to Morley Rectory in the film – an interesting choice for a movie that claims to tell a true story. There is no apparent explanation for this, either, as plenty of stories about Borley have already been produced, and the real people and places depicted in the movie are no secret. (The first place I went while examining this movie was Wikipedia, if that tells you anything.) But, all the same, “Borley” becomes “Morley,” “Lionel” becomes “Linus,” and so on. What isn’t changed are the names of protagonist Marianne, daughter Adelaide, and enigmatic occultist Harry Price. The movie is very much about them, and really, so was the part of Borley’s history the movie is based on.

Marianne Forster (Jessica Brown Findlay) is troubled even before she and her daughter join her husband, Linus, at the infamous Morley Rectory. Young Adelaide (Anya McKenna-Bruce) is her daughter, but Linus is not the girl’s father, and can barely even look at his wife, much less respond to her advances. Marianne tries to claim Adelaide is her niece (“She’s my sister’s!”), but everyone already knows the truth, and the scandal of being a preacher’s wife with such a sordid past follows her. When occultist and social pariah Harry Price (Sean Harris) seeks her out to warn her that her family’s in danger, she has no reputation left to lose by consorting with him. So she just might be able to face the gut-wrenching truth she and Price uncover. Unfortunately, this “truth” has about zilch to do with the actual history of Borley, factual or alleged.

Borley Rectory’s most famous ghost is an apparently murdered nun from a few centuries before. Most versions of the legend agree she was killed for having an affair with a monk from a cloister believed to have existed on the spot where Borley would eventually be constructed, and all of them are wild and fantastic and would make an amazing story. The Banishing has zero ghost nuns. What it does have is an order of extremist monks who believe true sanctification can only be attained through agonizing pain, and the torment of an unwed mother by this order that could, very loosely, kinda match some version of the nun legend if you squint really hard. It’s a great story, don’t get me wrong. The way it ties in with Marianne’s story arc is cathartic. But it’s not a “true story” by any imagination stretching.

The dreamlike, horrifying distortions of space and time which are a constant presence both inside and outside Morley evoke Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House/Bly Manor or Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, while the menacing Bishop Malachi (John Lynch) is a lot more Hellboy. Linus’ struggles to reconcile faith with philosophy (and sexuality) in the early days of WWII could be a movie of their own.

Overall, The Banishing has too many plates in the air to be as satisfying as I wanted it to be. Were this expanded into a limited series (like Hill House and Bly Manor) with every plot thread equally developed, and either the “true story” misnomer dropped altogether or reworked to better resemble the “true” story (maybe with the help of Borley Ghost Society?) it would be truly great. As it is, it’s a decent movie that’s definitely worth streaming when it releases on Shudder on April 15th.