Review of 'The Ritual'

I started off impressed with everything the ritual was achieving within a genre notorious for screwing up at least one element. The ritual has very solid foundations for an incredibly high quality horror and I was initially thinking of all the ways in which to praise it's raising of the bar… until half way though when the bar tripped and fell. Not a serious fall but enough for me to feel a little twinge of disappointment.

We are first introduced to the characters as they are cooking up ideas for a ‘boys holiday’. There is a convincing energy about the friend group and the well written moments of humour are delivered with hearty conviction by the amazing lead performances. The sardonic humour continues even after the tragedy which culminates in the four remaining friends taking a memorial hiking trip to Sweden.

The initial sequences I enjoyed especially the more meter horror references in the dialogue as they start to enter the forest, but the more that the themes of horror crept in the more I started to doubt the film. I was going solo in the PeckhamPlex, on the front row and yet I wasn't for one solitary moment, even a little bit scared. I think the film was more merit-worthy on its psychological exploration of guilt then on its ability to generate fear. The way that the starkly lit corner shop would follow Luke into the Forrest and into his dreams with the drink isles and lights intertwined around trees and branches, was an Incredibly effective way to represent the relentless, tangible power that regret holds over us. The location choices really enhanced the emotion of the scenes. The broad cinematic shots of the Swedish Mountains made it easy to really feel the sense of desperate loss.
The film achieved a strong balance between the fracturing of a longevous friend group with moments of humour and warmth during the aftermath of a loss however I feel it fell down most when it attempted to address the themes of horror.