I held off on seeing 2017’s The Ritual for longer than I should. Someone at my old job whose opinion I trusted told me that she hadn’t cared for it, so I decided to skip seeing it in the cinema. Fortunately, it came out on Netflix, so I was able to correct that decision earlier this year, and I’m glad I did. Written by Joe Barton, directed by David Bruckner and based on Adam Nevill’s 2011 novel, The Ritual is a fantastic example of what I talked about in my Jaws post. Bruckner makes you feel every ounce of the characters' pain and fear, making this one of the most emotionally involved horror films of recent years.
The film starts with five friends (Phil, Rob, Luke, Dom, and Hutch) on a night out, planning a holiday together. They can’t agree on where to go, and Rob’s suggestion of hiking in Sweden is quickly shot down. On the way back from the pub, Luke (the protagonist) and Rob stop by a shop, only to find that they’ve walked into the middle of a robbery. Luke hides behind some shelves, but Rob freezes; the robbers kill him when he refuses to give them his wedding ring. Luke blames himself for Rob’s death (even though it was kind of Rob’s fault), and his guilt and grief pervade the rest of the film.
Six months after Rob’s murder, the four remaining friends decide to take the hiking trip he suggested, in honour of his memory, and while on the trail Dom slips and injures his knee. He’s too hurt to make the long walk to their destination (although some of the others suspect him of exaggerating his injury), but Hutch finds an alternative route that (he says) will take them to the same destination in half the time. The short cut involves trekking through dense forest, and once the men are under the canopy things go a bit Blair Witch. There are strange symbols carved into the trees, and the friends come upon the split and gutted carcass of an elk hanging in the trees.
Caught in a heavy rain, the men seek shelter in an abandoned cabin, where they find runes hanging from the rafters that match the symbols carved into the trees outside; worse, in the attic is a carved figure resembling a human, but with no head and antlers for hands. Still, between the creepy cabin and the pouring rain outside, the men all choose to stay there.
During the night, all four suffer horrific dreams, and Luke finds unexplained puncture wounds in his chest. Naturally, they get the fuck out of that cabin, and make their way deeper into the forest, figuring that the fastest way out at this point is through.
The following night, Hutch is taken from his tent, his screams waking the others; while searching the woods for him they become hopelessly lost, but decide to carry on without their gear rather than try to find their way back to the campsite. Not much later, they come upon Hutch’s body, displayed in the trees just as the elk had been earlier.
After this, the creature become more brazen, not waiting for the others to go to sleep to drag Phil away. Luke and Dom run for it and reach what they think is safety - a log cabin, this time occupied. The occupants, though, knock the two men unconscious, and they awake to find themselves tied up in a basement.
While the people who own the cabin are sacrificing Dom to their god (the creature that has been preying on the men), one of them visits Luke, and explains that the creature is a child of Loki, and that it grants immortality to those who worship it. The tribute it demands is human sacrifice. She offers Luke a choice - submit to the creature and join the cultists, or refuse and serve as a sacrifice.
Luke escapes after the woman leaves him alone to ponder his fate, and sets light to the cabin, using the fire as a distraction to flee into the forest. The monster pursues him and, when it catches up to him, forces him to his knees several times to try and make him worship it. Luke fights back using an axe he stole from the cabin, and creates an opening to run. He reaches the end of the treeline and turns back, expecting to find the creature bearing down on him, but it appears unable to leave the forest. It roars in frustration as he walks towards a nearby road.
The Ritual is a film about guilt, and redemption. Luke starts the film with a moment defined by fear - he crouches behind some shelves as the robbers menace his friend; he weighs the vodka bottle in his hand, deciding whether to fight, but instead stays where he is while Rob is murdered. This is not a decision we should judge him for - if he’d attacked the robbers, all that would likely have changed is that he would have died along with Rob. Someone who will kill you for a wedding ring is not someone who’ll be scared off easily. Still, Luke views it as a cowardly act, and it’s his perspective that’s important. Dom reminds him (and the audience) of this later in the film - when Luke blames Dom and his injury for their decision to leave the planned hiking route, Dom replies “No, we wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.” He calls him a coward. When the creature is chasing Luke through the woods near the end of the film, it tries to break his spirit by sending him hallucinations of the night Rob died; throughout the film, Luke dreams of that moment, including during the night spent in the cabin. We are presented over and over again with the moment when Luke came to think of himself as a coward, and the final reminder comes moments before he stands up to a demi-god. He refuses to either worship the creature or be sacrificed to it. Either choise would have meant his journey ending in that forest - whether as a member of the cult, forbidden to ever leave, or as the last of his friends to die there. But by refusing to submit - by finding the courage to fight, even when any sane person would say it was hopeless - Luke escapes.
The filmmakers don’t show us what happens to Luke after he leaves the forest. He obviously would still be traumatised - you don't see your four closest friends murdered and just get over it - but the metaphor is clear enough: he was brought to a dark place by loss and weakness, and escaped through strength.
I’ll return to The Ritual later in the month for a more review-y post, but that’s it for today.
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