The Ritual

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)

A technically solid trek through a Swedish forest, and when three reindeer meet, the joy multiplies and intestines hang from branches. Unfortunately, the acting is wooden, the tempo is very slow and there is not much originality or intensity in the first two thirds. The final third is quite sharp thanks to the Jötunn-redneck mash-up, but still hardly makes a dent. Netflix could slowly produce these "so-so" movies on an assembly line. (03/13/2018)

We don't get a very revelatory ending and the characters aren’t too good, but that is compensated by a really thick atmosphere, an almost perfect narrative concept, and it's hard to find any weak spots in terms of style. The Ritual is both effective as horror and able to unnerve the viewer, as well as believable in the rapidly changing mood of the threatened group, which keeps it authentic for the first two-thirds and makes it essentially functional as a forest survival of sorts. It's really a shame that the explanatory finale pretty much ruins the existing tight structure and tension. Strong 3*. (02/09/2018)

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)