A Banquet: Sienna Guillory stars in horror film coming from IFC Midnight

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Perhaps best known for playing Jill Valentine in three of the six Paul W.S. Anderson era Resident Evil movies (you can purchase the whole series at THIS LINK), actress Sienna Guillory will soon be seen in the psychological horror movie A Banquet. IFC Midnight has acquired the North American distribution rights to the film and will be releasing it sometime in 2021.

Directed by Ruth Paxton from a screenplay by Justin Bull, A Banquet sees Guillory taking on the role of 

widowed mother Holly, who is radically tested when her teenage daughter Betsey experiences a profound enlightenment and insists that her body is no longer her own, but in service to a higher power. Bound to her newfound faith, Betsey refuses to eat but loses no weight. Holly is forced to confront the boundaries of her own beliefs.

Jessica Alexander plays Betsey. Ruby Stokes and Lindsay Duncan are also in the cast.

Tea Shop Productions' Leonora Darby, Mark Lane, and James Harris produced A Banquet with Nik Bower of Riverstone Pictures and and Laure Vaysse of REP Productions 8. REP Productions 8 also provided the funding for the project. Bull served as executive producer alongside Riverstone's Deepak Nayar and Jeremy Baxter, as well as Creativity Capital's Patrick Fischer and Richard Kondal.

A Banquet was filmed in London from late July through August, with COVID-19 restrictions in place.

When writing the script, Bull did research on the way American women fasted for religious purposes in the 17th and 18th centuries, digging into "how women were believed when they enacted certain things unto their bodies in the name of a religious experience". Producer Darby says the script takes "that tradition and placed it into 21st century culture to see how that would affect people".

This sounds interesting me. I look forward to hearing when IFC Midnight is going to release it.

Here's a first look image: