Worth: $15.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Rafe Spall, Archer Ali, Robert-James Collier, Sam Troughton
Intro:
Starting off in Blair Witch country before detouring into The Wicker Man, the film impresses with the way it deftly weaves together different horror tropes to excellent effect.
Four friends on a hiking trip in the wilds of northern Sweden are haunted by the death of a fifth in a convenience store robbery some six months back. Luke (Rafe Spall) is particularly troubled; he was there at the time, and froze up when he could have interceded and perhaps saved the now late Rob (Paul Reed).
The quartet face more immediate concerns after one of them, Dom (Sam Troughton) manages to injure himself, and they decide to take a shortcut back to civilisation through a nearby woods. This turns out to be a Very Bad Idea, as mysterious runes carved into trees, a gutted deer corpse dangling from a branch, and then a rundown cabin containing a strange and disturbing human effigy made of wicker and wood indicate that they have wandered off the map and into Folk Horror territory. Things only get worse from there – or better, if you’re a fan of well-made horror movies, which The Ritual most certainly is.
You’re better off as a viewer discovering The Ritual‘s gruesome pleasures for yourself, so if it already sounds like your cup of tea, hie thee to Netflix now and read no further. Starting off in Blair Witch country before detouring into The Wicker Man, the film impresses with the way it deftly weaves together different horror tropes to excellent effect. Is it a spooky lo-fi suspense flick? A meditation on the psychological burden of guilt and remorse? An eerie folk horror tale? A gory creature feature? Yes, yes it is – all these.
Director David Bruckner (The Signal, V/H/S) shows some impressive visual flair here. Luke is haunted by the convenience store robbery that led to Rob’s death, and the film interweaves the cold neon-and-tile environment of the shop with the forbidding darkness of the woods, leaving us unsure if we’re seeing a literal visual hallucination or a representation of Luke’s inner emotional turmoil. We also get a really, really great, grotesque monster design once The Ritual stops teasing and commits to going full bore supernatural horror. The film keeps the critter off stage for much of the running time – generally a good idea – but when it is revealed, it’s an all timer – a genuinely disturbing amalgamation of animal and human physical forms that is worth the price of admission alone.
It’s also refreshing to see a folk horror film that, as is revealed later in the proceedings, mines Norse mythology rather than the rather generic Western European paganism that is usually the default setting for this sort of thing (it’s all Margaret Murray’s fault). This doesn’t have any concrete narrative effects, but lends the film a subtly different flavour from its genre-mates – besides, Norse myth really is rather creepy and bloody-minded, despite what the folks at Marvel would have us believe.
The Ritual isn’t a game-changer – it’s just very good – a solid, mature, well-constructed horror tale with a fair shake of originality and an admirably grim and unsettling mood that carries us through to a tense and terrifying conclusion. What more could you ask for?
