Shudder Sunday: The Ritual

Director: David Bruckner

Year: 2017

Genre: Horror

Summary: A group of college buddies reunite for a trip to northern Sweden to commemorate a friends sudden and brutal death. While hiking, they encounter a menacing presence in the woods that's stalking them.

4/5 Pineapples

Review:

What'd I tell ya? The films with those mid-range scores and ratings are almost always my favorite.

With an IMDb raiting of 6.3 out of 10 and a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 70%, this Netflix original is exactly what the Blair Witch Project SHOULD have been.

Honestly, the Blair Witches are just not good. Not a big fan of really any found footage films, and on top of that, it's excruciating to watch any film where people are just panicking for seemingly NO REASON because the audience never sees a single threat/entity/witch on screen. Don't DM me.

The Ritual begins with a group of college friends, Luke, Robert, Dom, Hutch, and Phil, inside of a bar. After drinking and catching up, they eventually leave the bar, but Luke and Robert decide to keep the party going. They stop by a local liquor store, where Rob is telling Luke about how he wants to start really experiencing life. He thinks they should all go on a vacation together, and he suggests Kings Trail in Northern Sweden. Luke teases Rob for suggesting hiking over something more vacation-like and, well, fun - when something suddenly catches Rob's attention, and the camera pans slightly to the right of Luke, displaying the scene going on behind him.

The shots in this films are incredible.

The scene behind Luke is that of a woman battered and cowering behind the liquor store register. Luke catches a glimpse of two armed men coming from a back room beyond the counter and instinctively hides behind a large shelf of liquor. Rob was not as swift.

The men begin interrogating him, berating him, and demanding that Rob give them his wallet and belongings. He hands it and his watch over, but as he does, they see his ring. One of the men tell him to give it to him, but Rob hesitates, explaining it's his wedding ring. The men are growing impatient. Rob looks back towards Luke, as if asking if he's going to intervene in any way. (The robbers haven't spotted Luke.) Deciding Luke's not going to do anything, Rob looks back at the men to once again retaliate against surrendering his ring, when one of the men loses his patience and swings a metal pipe across his face. The assault brings Rob to the ground, with a large open wound across his face. Stunned, he barely manages to look up at Luke, before the man strikes the back of Rob's head one last time. Dropping the pipe, the two men take his belongings and evacuate the scene. It's apparent the last strike was fatal as blood seeps out around Rob's head.

Fast forward 6 months. The remaining 4 friends are hiking Northern Sweden to create a memorial and hold a small service for Rob. Around a stack of rocks with Rob's belongings and a photo of him sitting on top, the 4 friends say some words and pour out a (large) amount of vodka for him.

It's apparent that our main character, Luke, blames himself for Rob's death.

On the way back to town, one of the friends, Dom, twists his ankle. Their journey to civilization is still very extensive and they debate about what to do before settling on cutting through the woods, rather than following the trail around the woods, to make their hike shorter.

Yikes.

On their journey through the woods, they stumble upon what looks like a large black bull carcass hanging from a tree, spread-eagle fashion, with it's torso split down the middle, intestines falling from their natural resting place.

While I would have taken this as a warning, they essentially shrug it off, hoping it's just some kind of animals doing. They've committed to walking this far, they're not about to turn around now.

They continue on their way, passing trees with runes carved into them.

They come across an abandoned shack. It's late and raining, so they take shelter inside of it. As they are settling in, Phil is tempted to explore the upstairs. He finds a stick formation in one of the upstairs bedrooms. It's a humanoid shape, but has antlers for hands, no head, and odd (possibly hands for) feet.

Phil tells everyone to come look at the shrine of sorts. Hutch explains, "That's witchcraft." They ultimately decided to ignore the structure upstairs and attempt to sleep on the main floor of the shack.

They all wake up the next morning from terribly vivid night terrors. Luke is standing in the woods with claw-like punctures in his chest. Hutch soiled himself in his sleep, Dom's knee is swollen and bruised, and he's shaking, calling out to "Gale!" (his wife). Luke goes looking for Phil and finds him still asleep, on his knees in front of the shrine upstairs, praying to it, completely naked. Luke manages to wake everyone up, and they quickly gather their things and leave.

Luke wants to go back out of the woods the way they came. Dom insists on following a path inward from behind the shack because "a path means civilization". When Dom starts walking down the path, no one wants to leave him, so they reluctantly follow.

Everyone attempts to ignore what happened to them in the shack, but after Luke spots a large creature in the woods, everything is brought to the surface, and it becomes a big anxiety-ridden argument where Dom essentially blames Luke for Rob's death.

Messed. Up. And honestly, to see Dom's character, it makes one wonder what he truly thinks he'd even be capable of in terms of 'saving' someone else in a violent robbery situation, had it been him in the liquor store with Rob instead of Luke. But, I digress.

Continuing on their journey to get the hell out of the woods, they find a collapsed tent that's been almost entirely grown over, with all of the owners belongings still inside. There's a wallet inside with a license that has a expiration date of 1984. Why would someone leave everything behind? Unless...

Everyone is freaked out, but it's super late and everyone is exhausted. They decide to pitch their tents and rest for the night. They wake up from more night terrors, but this time, Hutch is missing. Luke, Dom, and Phil are frantically searching for him when they hear agonizing screams in the distance. Luke charges toward the sounds of his friends cries. The other two follow behind, but they're concerned about getting lost in the middle of the night. They agree to go back to the tents and then go looking for Hutch in the morning, but they never find their way back to their tents.

Instead, by day break, they find Hutch strung up to a tree and flayed - just as the bull.

Luke, Dom, and Phil who have already endured the trauma of losing one friend to a brutal robbery, are now faced with the loss of another friend to an unknown, savage entity, left with only the clothes on their backs. All that's left to do is press on, hoping to reach civilization as soon as possible.

It's apparent they're being hunted. But Luke FINALLY catches light through the trees. He runs towards it, and he can finally see civilization. He calls out to Phil and Dom, but no one answers. Luke makes his way back down the hill and finds Phil seemingly searching through the trees with his flashlight. Phil explains, "I heard something," before he's grabbed by something we can't see and dragged throughout the woods. All we're able to see is his flashlights chaotic thrashing between the trees.

Luke turns to run, but hits a tree and falls to the ground. Suddenly, he has a walking night terror of him back in the liquor store with Rob. He runs out of the liquor store and is met with Phil, Hutch, and Dom before he comes-to and is facing Phil's discarded flashlight.

With the flashlight, Luke is able to find Dom, hiding behind a fallen tree. Together they decide they need to book it to the top of the hill where Luke was able to spot that small town, but Dom's leg is still in bad shape, so Luke is practically carrying him.

They make it to the tree line, spot a fire-lit pathway, and follow it.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Would I go down a peculiar fire-lit path? Probably not. Would I if a large, unidentifiable beast that's been flaying my friends was chasing me through the woods? Probably.

In their dash toward what they can only hope is safety, they see Phil strung up in a tree and flayed like Hutch and the bull were. With no time to mourn, they continue their charge toward what becomes a small community of shacks. They bust through the first door they can reach and collapse to the floor. Once he's had a moment to catch his breath, Luke looks up from his position on his back, not getting up.

Another super cool shot. We can see from his upside down perspective that there's a woman in front of some kind of alter - unlike the one in the last shack they stumbled upon, but an altar none the less. He hardly has time to react before someone kicks him in the head.

When Luke and Dom wake up again, they're roped and chained in a dark room with alarming noises coming from the room above them. They attempt to search for something to cut the ropes tied around their wrists, but two men and a woman burst through the door. The woman approaches Luke with a bowl of water. He takes a drink, she sets the bowl down, then inspects the wounds on his chest (from his first night terror). She pulls her collar down and shows she has a similar mark, then goes to Dom. She looks right at him, and signifies to her chest. Dom doesn't have a mark, so she turns around and begins to leave the room. Luke begs her to give Dom water, but she doesn't relent.

She says something in a different language to the two men waiting by the door, and they charge toward Dom, undoing his ropes from his chains and dragging him out of the room. They take him upstairs and torture him in the room above where Luke is still bound.

A woman, similar in age, eventually comes in the room and kneels down to cover Luke's ears. She say, "They prepare for sacrifice. Over soon."

Luke wakes up the next morning to Dom being dragged back into his bound position beside Luke. When it's just the two of them, Dom tells Luke about the first nightmare he had the night they stayed inside the shack. He said he saw the people that have now taken them hostage and that they were offering him to "that thing" that's been chasing them in the woods. Dom tells Luke he's going to die there, and then he begs Luke to tell his wife that he tried to get back to her. He says, "you're gonna get out of here. And you're gonna burn this fucking place to the ground behind you. Do you understand? You don't stop. You keep going. You live."

Members of the society holding Luke and Dom captive come in to take Dom outside and tether him to a large wooden stake in the ground, facing the woods.

As Luke attempts to break his own hand to get out of the ropes tied around his wrists, there's a monstrous howl heard from the woods. The civilians kneel down with their hands out and heads down. Luke breaks his hand and struggles to get the last rope off of his other wrist. Dom sees Gale emerge from the woods. She touches his face, but her eyes are cloudy, and it comes to Dom's attention that her hands aren't her hands at all - but something else's. Suddenly, Dom can see the creature for what it truly is. A large centaur-like being that walks on four legs, has human hands, and no face (much like the structure they found in the original abandoned cabin). Luke watches from a crack in the wall as Dom gets ripped from the wooden stake and taken into the woods by the beast.

The woman that came to cover Luke's ears earlier makes her entrance again with food and water. He asks her what the creature is. She explains that it's an ancient god. They cannot say its name or look at it, but they worship it because it gives them immortality - so long as they offer sacrifices. She further explains, Luke has been marked. He was chosen. She tells him that his ritual begins tonight, and that it is a privilege to worship with the rest of them. She says if he doesn't kneel before the god, it will hang him from the trees.

She leaves, and he removes the last stubborn knot in his rope handcuff. He follows the sound of chanting in the upstairs room above the one he's been detained in. He finds what I assume to be preserved ancestors, propped up in rows of chairs before an altar. He grabs a nearby torch and lights them on fire. They scream in agony as if they're alive.

The fire captures the attention of the civilians, and the monster/god.

He finds a gun, but only manages to grab two bullets. He uses one on a man, reloads, and makes his way outside. He finds an axe and holds on to it. When he turns to leave out of the front door, the creature is already standing there. He turns around and leaps through the fire and burning structure to escape the cabin. He makes it back to the edge of the woods, where he can clearly see the monster from a distance now, holding up a victim. He decided to fire his last shot.

It doesn't do anything more than tick the creature off though. And he begins running further into the woods, with the creature in pursuit after him. While running for his life he's experiencing more walking night-terrors of the night in the liquor store. The creature knocks him to the ground and he loses grip of his axe.

The creature picks him up and stares into his face with glowing eyes. Luke, terrified, forces himself down to a kneel. Content with that, the god steps back and reveals itself as an even larger creature than originally anticipated. Luke decides to stand up to the creature, the it shoves him back down. As Luke is face down in the dirt, he remembers Rob.

Luke picks up the abandoned weapon and swiftly axes the god in the face, then books it out of the woods until he reaches open plains. He falls to the ground and turns to look back at the creature. It howls from the tree-line, seemingly unable to go any further.

Luke continues his journey home.

Credits roll.

~

I feel like this movie took my by complete surprise. With a title like The Ritual, I assumed something culty was going to go on, but I truly had little to no expectations. This film comes in hot with a brutal loss of a dear friend, and it really keeps you on the edge of your seat with the way it slowly introduces uncomfortable hints as to what's going on, like the bull, and the runes, and the shrine. It builds incredible anticipation.

I personally love that it became a cult/monster movie. It's different, and while seeing the creature face to face on screen, does make it a little less terrifying, I love the creativity behind actually SEEING what's chasing our main characters. An entire movie of "what the hell is going on?" is not a good movie. This film provided answers to the bizarre scenarios being conjured up.

The dream sequences were incredibly fun to me. There was one point where I genuinely started to wonder if Luke had just lost his mind, and he was the one killing his friends out of the guilt he had for "murdering" Rob.

4/5 pineapples because I with Luke would have gotten the chance to "redeem himself" for essentially being a coward and letting his friend die. I feel he should have gotten at least one of his other friends out alive with him. At this point, everyone he loves is dead - so like, what's his motive to stay alive?

An incredible film none the less. I absolutely loved it and highly recommend it.

Would you have stood up for your friend in an armed liquor store robbery? Would you have agreed to cutting through the woods? And, would you have bowed to the god for eternal life?

Personally, I'm cool with a finite life line. But, please share YOUR thoughts, and thanks for reading!