The Binding Review (Film, 2020)
content warning: animal abuse, violence against children, gore, religious content
A woman and her daughter visit her fiance’s mother in the countryside. The daughter wanders off, as children do, and winds up being hit with a curse from exploring the wrong part of the estate. Now the family is fighting against the forces of evil and the impenetrable secret rites of the locals to save a child from total destruction.
Domenico Emanuele de Feudis’ debut feature film is beautiful. The slight sepia tone to the stock pushes the beautiful Italian manor into the realm of nightmares. Sometimes, less is more in horror and the golden hues of The Binding are enough on their own to offset the balance of reality and make anything possible.
The Binding is a Catholic exorcism film. This might seem like a redundant term, but there is a distinction here. A Catholic exorcism film is one in which the rituals and practices of Roman Catholicism are distorted to create horror. It takes more than a splash of holy water to really qualify for this distinction. The climactic battle against a demon is a twisted interpretation of mass, including sacramental wine and communion, prayer, homily, and dismissal. It’s meant as an act of criticism against the lavish rituals of the faith through blasphemy and pure terror.
The exorcism as a horror form is common now. We get a few of these films every year. Some claim to be based on true events. Others go for extremity of reaction and distortions of the victim. The Binding goes for a mix between Gothic and exorcism forms.
The woman enters this beautiful mansion she’s never known before. The older generation that lives in and around the countryside has a very different style of life. Every action they take has an element of prayer and ritual. They don’t specify exactly what each prayer is, but they all do each moment in perfect symmetry. Each ritual pushes the woman further and further to the outskirts of her new family. Her faith is not in question; her understanding of what they’re actually praying to for protection is.
As someone raised Catholic, I find the particular approach to horror in The Binding quite effective. I can also see how someone without the ingrained training of years of Catechism and, specifically, the veneration of saints could be left wanting more. The Binding never defines the terms of its world, forcing you to work off your own knowledge (or lack thereof) of Catholic ritual and iconography to unpack its meaning.
For example, an early scene has the woman enjoying a banquet at a long wooden table. They are celebrating her engagement. They perform a near-silent prayer she does not recognize, ending with a sip of wine taken in unison by every other guest. She winds up spilling a splash of red wine onto her white linen shirt. The precise placement of the splash is important. She has a growing red stain in her right side, matching the fifth wound of Christ during his crucifixion. This is after the woman notices another person at the table hiding small marks on her wrists, another part of the five wounds depicted in the Catholic cross, candles, portraiture, and iconography surrounding Jesus. These are blink and you’ll miss it moments of symbolism that penetrate my lapsed Catholic mind like Daisy’s green light in The Great Gatsby.
The Binding is a slow, heavily symbolic, and beautiful exorcism film. I’m a big fan of this particular style of religious horror, so I found a lot of value in it. This is a form that reached its peak in the exploitation films of the 1970s, so the references aren’t quite as mainstream and remembered as they used to be.
The Binding is streaming on Netflix.
