Five friends – Phil, Dom, Hutch, Luke and Rob – meet in a pub and start discussing plans for a holiday trip together. Rob suggests a hiking trip to Sweden but the others think it sounds horribly boring and would rather travel to someplace where they can get as shitfaced as possible. Later, Rob and Luke goes into a store in order to buy some more alcohol, but ends up getting involved in a robbery. Luke finds a place to hide, but Rob ends up getting killed by the robbers. Then we fast forward to six months later, where the remaining friends have decided to honor Rob’s memory by taking the hiking trip to Sweden after all. After making a memorial of sorts by placing Rob’s picture on top of it, Dom ends up injuring his knee and they decide to cut through the forest instead of following the marked trail in hopes of getting to the destination sooner. Bad choice. The first bad omen they encounter is a gutted elk, hanged on a tree like a morbid christmas decoration. Having to seek shelter in a creepy abandoned cabin due to a rainstorm, they also come upon a sinister-looking effigy depicting a decapitated human torso made of twigs, with antlers for hands. The tension between them is also growing because of Luke’s survivor guilt and the feeling that the others blame him for not having done something to save Rob. As if all of this wasn’t bad enough and causing some pretty frayed nerves, there’s something evil out there in the woods, stalking them…
The Ritual is a supernatural folk horror film from 2017, directed by David Bruckner and written by Joe Barton. It is based on a novel by Adam Nevill from 2011 by the same name. Despite the film’s story happening in Sweden, they decided to film it in Romania due to tax credits and softer labor laws. It was shot on location in the Carpathian Mountains. And of course, there aren’t any Swedish actors here either, and the locals are played by a mix of Danish, English and Romanian actors. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival where Netflix acquired the rights for $4.75 million. And with that being said…the screenshots aren’t of the best quality. It’s Netflix. ‘Nuff said.
The movie is for the most part a very character-driven story, where the subdued tension between the four friends comes more to the surface the further they go into the Swedish forest. The horrific findings like the elk pinned to the tree, pagan symbols on the trees and of course the headless effigy in the cabin all makes up for a gradual build of expectation: something’s wrong in the forest, and they’re about to find out what it is soon enough. There’s a sinister atmosphere from the very start, and you know the characters are not in for a holiday of the fun sort. The survivor guilt ripping Luke to pieces is portrayed in an effective way, not to mention how it’s a very clear “elephant in the room” with them all the time. The interesting thing is, despite how they all more or less collectively blame their friend for not having done anything to save Rob during the robbery, they don’t exactly practice what they preach. When they encounter the dangers in the forest, none of the characters show themselves off as a brave hero facing the dangers head first, pretty much proving they most likely wouldn’t have fared any better if they had been in Luke’s situation back then.
Now, over to the monster, which is being kept in the shadows of the forest for most of the time but comes into full display in the final moments of the movie. I have to give thumbs up for the creature design, it’s truly an interesting take on a Jötunn-inspired creature (from Norse mythology). It also works well to keep the monster hidden during the majority of the film, giving it the necessary build-up before the reveal. The earlier scenes where we see the monster’s disemboweled victims in the trees makes us wonder what kind of creature has done this, and how…
I have read several of Adam Nevill’s folk horror books but I haven’t read this once, so I cannot compare the movie to the novel. Overall though, I’d say the movie does portray a lot of the ominous folklore-horror vibes that I’ve gotten from the other novels, and makes for a fun lost-in-the-woods horror flick with a pretty cool monster design.
Director: David Bruckner
Writer: Joe Barton
Country & year: UK/Canada, 2017
Actors: Rafe Spall, Arsher Ali, Robert James-Collier, Sam Troughton, Paul Reid, Matthew Needham, Jacob James Beswick, Maria Erwolter, Hilary Reeves, Peter Liddell, Francesca Mula
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5638642/
