A group of friends go on a hiking trip in the Swedish Wilderness to honour the tragic death of their friend. However, the trip goes from melancholy to menacing when they become lost and begin to realise that they are being chased by a dark and powerful presence in the forest.
"The Ritual" is good for a number of reasons and I'm going to try and get these down with as few spoilers as possible. But, as ever, if you'd rather not know any details before watching I recommend you click away now because there's lots of things I want to say about this film.
Firstly, the film (and I also assume the book, but I'm yet to read it, having only learned of its existence through researching this film) explores a lot of deep stuff. Our main protagonist is Luke (Rafe Spall) who witnessed the murder of his friend, Robert (Paul Reid), first hand and was spared a similar fate only by hiding. Throughout the film we see that Luke is haunted even before the forest with his deep guilt over not doing more to save Robert. He's a broken man who hasn't yet started to deal with what's happened. We also get to learn, as the group's friendships unravel in the stress of survival, that he's not alone in blaming himself for Robert's demise. The main journey of the film becomes not just survival of the forest, but of being a survivor ultimately and pushing past guilt to move forward in life. It's a strong message and "The Ritual" handles it well and with care. Luke is no hero. He's not even a particularly charming or likeable character. He's just a guy trying to live with what's happening. And I found that to be very effective and kind of refreshing.
Our other college buddies consist of; charismatic leader, Hutch (Robert James-Collier); quiet but funny Phil (Arsher Ali) and; the guy who doesn't really want to be there at all, Dom (Sam Troughton). The group dynamic is good and the team come across as genuine old college pals all moving on in their lives. We get a hint of everyone's fears in the movie and the characters are rounded enough to care about. Although personally I feel Phil was a bit short changed in the end.
Now to tackle what I really liked about the film; The scares. It's not a huge dialogue driven piece and the strong visuals make this a good thing. There's been a lot of 'thoughtful' 'quiet' horror recently that's more boring than artfully chilling, but "The Ritual" delivers its scares with style. The setting (actually Romania) goes from beautiful and picturesque to menacing and dark very nicely. We have some horror tropes in the form of spooky signs and abandoned cabins that don't feel overdone and are plot-relevant. We even have a skilful build up of our main antagonist from glimpses through the trees to a full on reveal that is both still scary and wonderfully designed. There are jumps and gore, freaky dream sequences, perilous situations and mythology.
The plot moves along at a good pace and the story actually develops as we go without just repeating the same style of scares over and over again. There are, of course, weaker points but they're all pretty arbitrary. Really, in my view, this film deserves lots of praise.
[Image: Entertainment One, Netflix, et al]
Hani
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