Review #53: The Ritual (2017)

This review was originally written in October 2019.

October Horror Movie Review #1: The Ritual

I was going to watch this movie last week while on vacation but the version I'd downloaded was real choppy, so catching it on Netflix made for a good start to the month. Overall I liked this film; it didn't do anything new or exciting but most of what it did was solid and it reminded me of several other, better movies (which I mean in a good way).

It definitely felt a lot like Blair Witch (both the original and the remake/boot from 2016)- friends on a hike in the woods get lost and encounter spooky stuff. It also reminded me of another movie called Witches' Night from 2007- a group of guy friends encounter some witch-y stuff on a camping trip and each of them gets cursed in a specific way- but where that movie focused on each of the men and their own failings as part of the ultimate ritual, this movie doesn't, really. The guy at the beginning injures his leg but it doesn't really impact the story except to cause a little bit of arguing (you'd expect him to be the first to die because of it, but nope). Each of the others seem to have something unique haunting them- one guy pees himself in his sleep, another one wakes up in a daze praying to some creepy statue, the third calls out his wife's name, and the main character has a design carved into his chest- but none of these really come up again in any meaningful way.

Why was the main character given that scar on his chest? What significance did that have, when those cultists had the same scar? It's not like it spared him from being sacrificed to the big monster or anything. And his fate in the end didn't hinge on overcoming the conflict that haunted him for the whole movie, so while I liked that it kept coming back up (the recurring motif of the liquor store was without a doubt one of the most striking parts of the film) I don't feel like it had anything to do with the overall conflict of the film. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but if the final confrontation was about him having to finally stand up and save one of his friends from being killed, I feel that would have been a more powerful resolution. It even felt like it was gearing up to that (considering the friend that accused him of being a coward was the one who was in danger at the end) but then the movie just cast it aside. Not everything has to be connected, but recurring themes feel like they should be.

It's not all bad though: This movie definitely knows how much is enough. Like I said, I absolutely loved the recurring flashbacks of the liquor store. And once they actually showed the monster (surprisingly late in the film) its appearance was both intriguing and horrifying, and you never got a good enough look at it to get over being scared. If I had to give this movie a fatal flaw, it would be that it's just a bit too generic; even the name is easily forgotten and it's hard to write about the content of the movie and also the title without getting the terminology a bit confused. This movie does a lot of good stuff but if I ever wanted to show someone any of that stuff I can think of several movies that do it all just a little bit better.

Overall rating: 6/10

Number of things I've seen Rafe Spall in lately: Surprisingly many