The Ritual (2017)

Dir - David Bruckner
Wir - Joe Barton

After a night of drinking at a pub, five friends make a stop to pick up more booze at a shop. Their timing is unfortunate as thugs are in the middle of robbing the place. Oblivious to their surroundings, two of the friends enter the shop. A decision that will affect all the friend's lives. At the end of the night one man lays dead. The other cowering behind shelving, all courage drained from his soul.

Six months later, the four remaining friends are on a backpacking excursion in Sweden to honour their dead friend. Tensions are a bit high as some openly accuse Luke (Rafe Spall) of cowardice and blame him for their friend's death. The rift between friends is widened when Dom (Sam Troughton) hurts his knee and his mates (Arsher Ali and Robert James-Collier) think he's being overly dramatic. As a compromise the group goes off trail and takes a short cut through the woods in hopes of arriving at their final destination earlier than planned. In these types of films it's never a wise idea to stray from the path. Or to walk through the woods.

With Dom's bad knee and his need to frequently rest the backpackers don't make it far and decide to take refuge in an abandoned cabin for the night. And that decision is made despite carvings in the trees by the cabin and Luke thinking that he hears something prowling around the forest. If I spotted weird pagan symbols carved into the trees encircling a disused cabin in the woods I'd keep on marching, but then we wouldn't have much of a film would we? Kipping for the night when they awake they realize, but choose to ignore, that something really bad happened during the night. One man pissed himself, another cries in the corner, the third has odd marks on his chest and the fourth is kneeling before a pagan idol made from wood, apparently worshiping it in his sleep. Bags are packed and out the door they go. Deeper into the seemingly unending woods.

I do enjoy a good folk horror film and this is a good one. While the set up is reminiscent of many horror films, a group of people lost in the woods, without phone service, being hunted by something, THE RITUAL is smarter than most of them. For starters there aren't any scenes of them walking and walking only to arrive back at the spot they started. The few stupid mistakes they make are believable ones, ones that the average person in dire straits may make themselves. There's no scene with a car unable to turn over, or we knocked out the bad guy so let's run away instead of finishing him off rubbish. With the exception of Luke, who has a well defined character arc, the other characters aren't as fleshed out but are likeable.  The pagan themes tie in well to the forest where most of the films takes place. The landscape, Romania filling in for the film's setting of Sweden, is breathtaking. I'd hike there. If I had an amulet to ward off the gods, creatures and minions of the old world.

Tense, scary and smarter than your average woodland animal, THE RITUAL is a path worth exploring.

Director David Bruckner also helmed a segment of the excellent anthology SOUTHBOUND.

*** out of ****