DVD & BluRay

THE BANISHING Shudder/Vertigo, cert 15 On digital platforms

I love good old Gothic haunted house tales, where spooks stalk long dark corridors that are poorly lit by flickering candles. Downton Abbey would have benefitted from a few ghosts, rather than just skeletons in the cupboards, but one of the stars of the toff saga, Jessica Brown Findlay (pictured) who played beautiful but doomed Lady Sybil Crawley, gets to be the subject of jumpy scares in this Brit film directed by Christopher Smith of horror comedy Severance fame. She plays Marianne who moves with her vicar husband Linus (John Hefferman) and their young daughter Adelaide (Anya McKenna-Bruce) into a country pile during WW2, not perturbed apparently that the previous incumbent apparently vanished. The house in the film is based on Borley Rectory, England’s ‘most haunted’ house, so it looks like the kind of abode where something sinister stalks the new inhabitants. Marianne becomes tormented by horrifying visions, which may have something to do with the colourful past she left behind when she inexplicably married loopy Linus. But, the evil ‘resident’ seems to have

TAKE BACK 101 Films, cert 15 DVD £7.99 Small town lawyer Zara (Gillian White) gains online fame when her part-time martial arts classes with her husband Brian (Michael Jai White) prove handy as she foils a stick-up at a coffee shop. Unfortunately for Zara her new-found fame has brought her into conflict with a human trafficking ring run by a dog-stroking bad guy called Patrick (Mickey Rourke) who orders the kidnap of her step-daughter. And Zara’s carefully hidden past life also comes dangerously to the surface as she and Brian join forces with a detective (James Russo) to bring down Patrick and his gang. Gillian’s kicking, thumping and punching moves make it fun.

Our rating:

designs on the child - don’t they always?. Naturally, Marianne consults ghosthunting spiritualist Harry Price (Sean Harris), but any spooky story lover could have warned her it has something to do with the house being built on the remains of an ancient monastery where nasty monks committed atrocious acts. The director uses some effective camera trickery to create unsettling mirror images that send a shiver down your spine, but it follows a familiar blueprint. Pity it isn’t available on DVD for genre collectors to keep.

Our rating:

YOU’RE NOT ALONE High Fliers, cert 15 DVD £7.99 The death of her estranged husband Patrick forces unstable mother Emma (Katya Winter) to face up to her responsibility and build a relationship with her daughter Isla (Leya Catlett) as she moves in to Patrick’s old house. Things soon go badly wrong as burglar alarms go off, dead birds turn up on the doorstep, strange figures flit past the windows and Emma’s slippery former admirer Mark and the local bible bashers do little to lift her spirits as the whole thing becomes a nightmare haunting.

The film starts on a slow-burn fuse but ends in scream-outloud moments of terror which might not be original, but still work.

Our rating: