Ritual

Very dark and nasty, with an unpleasant atmosphere. Many people will surely say that Keating’s début (he’s only 23) is a weak, not very well thought-out and extremely pretentious attempt at horror. But for me it is actually the combination of “pointlessly” long shots and scenes, unpleasant music (or rather, cacophonous noises) and the almost stubborn efforts to not satisfy the viewers with the typical gimmicks of the genre what makes Ritual such a harrowing horror experience. When the tension is supposed to escalate, Keating prefers to show a relatively long conversation between two people in a car. When most horror fans are expecting a good dose of exploitation violence, Keating “shuts de door” :-D… It’s not a pleasant experience in the true sense of the word and it will be very divisive, but for me it’s been a proper and totally unexpected surprise and I will be impatiently looking forward to other films of this rookie director. (12/23/2013)