The Ritual
Look at the trees in the poster for David Bruckner’s horror film, “The Ritual,” released by Netflix last month. I kind of love seeing those type of trees in a horror film, because their makeup- skinny trunks, seemingly dead branches for a ways up those trunks- are creepy as Hell. A forest with those trees is primed for terror, and some of that is because, I love the way rows of those trees can create slits for terrible things to peak out at the characters, and audience, and give a good jolt. Now, it is left for the story, and the filmmaker, to deliver a film worthy of that setting. It’s a shame that, for much of its running time, “The Ritual” doesn’t.
I think one reason I have an affinity for both the original “Blair Witch” film, as well as the 2016 follow-up, is because, as a former Boy Scout, who spent plenty of days hiking in the woods and around nature, I actually kind of enjoy the idea of a horror film set in a situation I grew up familiar with. Would I like it as much if something like that had happened to me when I was in Scouts? Of course not, but the cinema is safe for delving into such nightmare scenarios, on top of which, my hiking days are well in the past. The danger of being hunted by a supernatural creature worshiped by people deep in the forest is pretty remote for me now.
Bruckner’s film is based on a 2011 novel by Adam Nevill, and it has four friends hiking in Sarek National Park in Sweden. The reason for their trip is to honor a fifth friend, Rob, who was murdered in a store robbery six months ago. One of the friends, Luke (Rafe Spall), was with him in the store where he was killed, but was paralyzed by fear in trying to help him. As they hike back, they find themselves getting lost in the woods, as well as confronted by strange and surreal sights and happenings- pagan carvings in the trees, vivid “nightmares” during an evening spent in an abandoned cabin, and an animal carcass hanging high in the trees. You can probably figure out where it’s going from here as Luke, Phil (Arsher Ali), Hutch (Robert James-Collier) and Dom (Sam Troughton) get more and more tense about the situation.
I feel like it’s difficult to do this type of simple horror movie without getting into the cliches of the genre- I think that’s why the “found-footage” concept was so effective for “The Blair Witch Project,” and even “Blair Witch,” and why “Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2” and “The Forest” sucked. That’s what happens with the script by Joe Barton during the first 2/3s of the film, although Bruckner has a great eye for creating striking visuals that keep our interest up until the final third of the film, where the story and visuals really go for broke by showing us what has been haunting these friends as they find their way out of the woods. The reason I watched this film in the first place was because Guillermo Del Toro had recommended it on Twitter, praising the creature design, and look, the newly-minted Oscar winner praising someone else’s creatures is enough to get me interested. Truth is, he isn’t wrong, either, because the creature we witness at the end of this film is a work of haunting beauty, if you love that type of thing, and the ending of this film is well worth the rest of the film, even if it isn’t quite as good as you’d want it to be.
