There will never be too many atmospheric horror movies about breathy English women trembling down the hallways of a haunted Victorian mansion and growing paranoid about whatever it is they hear going bump in the night.
So it should be an unalloyed pleasure to watch a new one as musty and well-polished as Christopher Smith’s “The Banishing.”All of the proper ingredients are in place, starting with a creepy old house based on the Borley Rectory (which occultist Harry Price designated as “the most haunted house in England”), some wide-eyed new tenants ripe for the scaring, and an oppressive religious streak that’s paved over all manner of dark secrets since an order of monks first occupied the property during the Middle Ages.
Stir in some creepy-looking dolls, a slight hint of Nazis, and a redheaded Sean Harris — as Harry Price himself! — whisper-sniveling dialogue like “Denial is the teat
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