The Ritual

It's a bit of a surprise to me that such a good horror film came from the UK, because I've recently become accustomed to seeing films from there that are almost at the C level. At least in the horror genre, anyway. However, The Ritual perfectly shows that there are filmmakers in the UK who know how to make a horror film. David Bruckner has the skills to do that. You can find good films in his filmography even before The Ritual. (03/30/2018)

Ninety percent of this movie’s runtime comprises a very minimalist horror story working mainly with sound. A scary forest, witchcraft and an ancient demon whose concealment rouses the audience’s fear and imagination. The Ritual is a goose-bumps-inducing adventure for those who like to watch this type of thing over and over (this time you will be reminded of The Blair Witch Project and Predator). [Sitges FF] (10/08/2017)

At first, I thought like I was watching a more technically advanced version of the Blair Witch Project (and that’s not that difficult to achieve, let’s be honest here). Fortunately, this film gets more interesting, turning a bush craft horror into a proper fantasy one with Scandinavian gods, which elevated it to a new level. Marvel movies aside, not everyone dares to invite the Viking gods from Valhalla into their movie. It always seems strange, ethereal. And they made a good use of it in this movie. It does give Sweden a bit of a backwoods feel, but still better than if it took place in the Czech Giant Mountains. (05/14/2020)

The Ritual is certainly not beyond comparison with the cult-classic The Blair Witch Project (which I personally found quite mediocre). Here, instead of a trio of students searching for the supernatural in the woods on purpose, we have four friends who got into the woods and the supernatural found them by chance. (Spoiler alert!) On the one hand, Bruckner's film is a decently atmospheric one-off about confronting demons – both inner and ancient ones – but on the other hand, it limps because of the characters (who, thank God, die according to descending likeability) and the mythological evil, which, while having breathtaking and original visuals, has a blandly sketched background. I have mixed feelings about the film's conclusion. (11/26/2023)

The first quality horror film of the year. For two thirds of its length, it’s a terrifying and mysterious forest madness and I was ready to give it the highest rating, because everything works perfectly genre-wise. It’s also further proof of how much better horror can be when the main characters aren’t only pretty young faces from a poster, but living characters – or normal people. The night sequence in the abandoned forest cabin was the creepiest movie experience I had a long time; it was really chilling. The closing third takes things a bit further than I would have expected, at the expense of the atmosphere the film was building up until that point. And the ending is proof of how valid the old wisdom is: that horror works better when the core evil is hidden. So I’m keeping the last star for myself, but otherwise, I’m very satisfied. (02/06/2018)