Review of The Ritual (2017) by Stuart M — 13 Oct 2017

The story is typical 'lost in the woods' horror fare, but that was pretty much inherent in the premise. There are only so many ways to distinguish such a film from its predecessors in terms of tropes. Dramatically, the film takes an interesting approach in making the protagonists a group of 30-something old university mates instead of your typical horny teenagers. What's more, these friends are mourning the loss of one of their number (the true enthusiast for a random Swedish hike) who was killed in a mugging where our protagonist did nothing. This brings a refreshingly different air to the proceedings, and provides us with some interesting character drama in addition to the horror.

I was very impressed with the threat. In these sort of films the only big question is what's stalking you? Is it cultists? An alien? One of your group driven mad?Some sort of monster? The film goes for a combination of the first and last ones, and does so very effectively. The monster design was one of the best I've seen in years. They show just enough of it to be scary while hiding it in shadows and behind implausibly narrow trees. Even at the end, where it's form becomes rather more clear, it maintains its sense of mystery and otherworldliness. That's tough to pull off and the crew really deserves strong recognition for that. The one question I had was this: is it really that dark in northern Sweden in the height of summer? This film would have you believe that Swedish nights are this long dangerous affair, but at this time of year there should be basically no night in Sweden. Even if they're not in the 24-hour-daylight region, it stays pretty bright, with only a couple of hours of night and even that feels like the sun is just over the horizon.