‘A Banquet’ Review: Ruth Paxton’s Feature Debut Needs A Little Less Seasoning
What’s going on with Betsey? That’s the crux of Ruth Paxton‘s feature debut, the intense family psychodrama “A Banquet,” for which she, and writer Justin Bull, provide many alluring choices but no definitive answer. Instead, the film—about a family that experiences a major trauma and tragedy and the teenage daughter who is forever, radically altered and “enlightened” afterward—flirts with several compelling subtexts, dresses them up in genre psycho-horror garb, and then rushes to a climax that provides no conclusive key to its central riddle.