The Ritual review
Someone needs to exorcise this genre.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
The Ritual
Directed by David Midell
Written by David Midell and Enrico Natale
Starring Al Pacino, Dan Stevens, Ashley Greene, Abigail Cown, Patrick Fabian, Patricia Heaton and Maria Camila Giraldo
The Ritual Review
I may come to regret this statement when the influencer horror film Skillhouse hits theaters in July…but exorcism movies are the most tired subgenre of horror. Some good movies still come out of it…which is something that it has over the influencer horror genre. But it also yields a far bigger crop of bad movies than any other type of horror film. When a movie like The Ritual comes around…you can’t help but wonder who the target audience is. Horror fans will have seen everything that it’s doing too many times to count. Are there large swaths of moviegoers who have never seen a possession/exorcism movie before? Is Al Pacino going to lead them to try one out in 2025? I had a lot of time to think about these questions while The Ritual shambled along on screen in front of me.
It’s not Al Pacino’s fault…I want to make sure he’s given a pass for the review that’s about to unfold. He’s perfectly fine in The Ritual. Dan Stevens is too. Abigail Cowen, Ashley Greene, Patricia Heaton, Patrick Fabian…everyone who pops on screen to play their part plays it well enough. The problem, as it almost always is in exorcism movies, is the story. Well…that and a directorial choice we’ll be getting to in a moment. Story is key, however…and The Ritual doesn’t have one with anything new to say.
One could argue that this is part of the design, misguided as that would be. The Ritual is based on actual events. Or, at least, actual recordings of events in 1928. The exorcism of Emma Schmidt (played here by Abigail Cowen) is purported to be among the most well-known exorcism cases of all time. It inspired The Exorcist which, in turn, inspired every single exorcism movie since 1973. Most of the time, heading back to the source material would be an interesting endeavor. That’s not the case with The Ritual for a few obvious reasons. First, The Exorcist exists. There’s a reason no one has come close to its quality in over 50 years. Second, too many people have tried already. However it’s dressed up…no matter the hook…exorcism movies always feel the same. And then, of course, there’s the biggest reason The Ritual doesn’t work. It’s a bad movie.
Bad can mean a lot of things…and it does mean a lot of things in The Ritual. It means boring. This is a boring movie. The most interesting thing about it is picking out which parts The Exorcist appropriated best. A priest who’s struggling with his faith, Father Steiger (Dan Stevens), works with an experienced exorcist, Father Riesinger (Al Pacino) to perform an exorcism on a young girl. That’s The Exorcist, alright. Steiger has recently lost a family member just like Father Karras. The outline of Friedkin’s masterpiece is clearly formed from this case. Except…only half of it.
The Exorcist wisely spends a lot of time focused on the relationship between Chris and her possessed daughter Regan. The Ritual just drops Emma Schmidt off and pays her family life a bit of lip service. There’s nothing to connect to. Recognizing that The Ritual isn’t trying to remake The Exorcist…it’s still a key point to making a possession story work.
Then there’s the aforementioned directing choice. Director David Midell shoots The Ritual with a constantly moving camera. I don’t mean like how Hitchcock used the camera to move through scenes with his actors or to show something ominous lurking to the side. I mean he shoots it like he’s holding the camera in the actors’ faces after doing ten shots of whiskey. Strange zoom ins and outs, an unsteady feel for simple conversation pieces. It’s obviously a stylistic choice…one that could even be defensible if it was reserved for scenes where Steiger’s mind is breaking or Emma reacts to the rituals. Instead…it’s always shaking. Simple two character conversations are met with odd swoops and zooms. I have no idea why. Maybe there was a narrative reason to do it. I can just tell you that it didn’t work.
The Ritual only has one recourse left when dealing with a script that feels like a rerun and a dizzying visual style. It needed to be scary. It isn’t. In fact, it gives The Exorcist: Believer a run for its money in shocking lack of scares.
The movie opens with a moment, taken from days into the story, that contains a nice little spooky piece of business. Father Steiger is outside…reeling from whatever he’s been experiencing. When he gathers himself enough to return to Emma’s ritual…we briefly see the girl unnaturally floating up the wall. It’s a great moment. One that makes you think…hey…maybe we’re going to get a decent exorcism movie here. Not only is it the only effective horror moment in The Ritual…I couldn’t even place where it would happen in the story we later see. That’s how detached an exciting moment is from the climax of this story.
Pacino, Stevens and the cast are easily the highlight of The Ritual. Their only mistake was being drawn to a movie with nothing to say. It’s an able cast with some fine actors. Pacino is toned down…and you feel like his character would really work with a more interesting script. Stevens is solid as always…but the story barely scratches the surface of his character. It’s funny that The Ritual doubles down on the priest side of The Exorcist story…only to offer a paper-thin character compared to Damien Karras. As with almost every exorcism movie since 1973…just go watch The Exorcist do it better.
Scare Value
The Exorcist is one of the greatest movies ever made. It’s quality only shines brighter over fifty years later as attempt after attempt to try and recreate its power fail. The Ritual takes its story back to a real documented 1928 exorcism. It shifts its focus fully onto the priests performing the ritual…leaving us little reason to connect with the possessed girl they’re trying to save. You’ve seen everything in The Ritual before. That continues to be the biggest problem with the subgenre.
1.5/5
The Ritual Link
Buy tickets on Fandango
