The Ritual

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. (13/03/2018)

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. (26/11/2023)

Due to a new job opportunity, I've had the opportunity to spend 2 days hiking through the Scandinavian wilderness. Before I did, I was advised to watch this piece for light "acclimatization" :-) I admit that it added a certain authenticity to the uneasiness and fear, because our woods after all end in a friendly village over the hill and an icy shower coupled with really bad weather is a bit rarer here. The behavior of the frustrated travelers was logical within limits, and you have to give credit to the fact that it is the invisible and yet clearly audible evil that robs you of sleep. 3/4 of the time you get chills down your spine and elsewhere, only to end up with a psychotic/action-film ending full of exaggerated occultism solidly kill the wonderfully constructed atmosphere. Considering how well made horror movies have been lately, the creators of Ritual have managed to conjure up a worthy representative of the genre. (11/05/2022)

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. (14/05/2020)

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*. (09/02/2018)