Watch horror Movies for free with Amazon Prime

Ritual

Ritual Review
2013
4
Director: 
Mickey Keating

SYNOPSIS: 

After receiving a distressed phone call, a man arrives at a seedy highway motel to find that his estranged wife has killed a stranger who is connected to a dangerous cult.

REVIEW: 

A married couple with a complicated relationship, a corpse, and a room at a less than reputable motel. It’s a classic formula for a horror movie that’s no doubt familiar for many genre fans. It’s also the set-up for Mickey Keating’s 2013 film, Ritual. Ritual is the 14th original film distributed by After Dark Originals. It stars Dean Cates (Pod) and Lisa Summerscales as married couple, Tom and Lovely. Additional costars include Derek Phillips (Serum), Brian Lally, and Katherine Skelton.

Ritual opens with a warning title card, promising plenty of violence to come. It then shifts to a beautifully filmed sequence that introduces us to Tom and Lovely when they first met. She’s soaking up the rays on the beach without a care in the world, he offers to light her cigarette for her, and all seems right with the world. Cut to years later. Tom and Lovely are still married, but are now more estranged than anything else.

However, Tom is still apparently the first person Lovely would call if she were really in a jam. We know this because she does exactly that after killing a man she picked up at a bar after the encounter took a violent turn for the worse in a motel room. When Tom arrives, the pair get to work covering up the incident. However, they discover a disturbing video tape in the dead man’s car during the process – the first of many frightening discoveries they’ll make over the course of the night. Tom and Lovely are about to find themselves caught in a web neither of them bargained for.

The way Ritual opens is intriguing to say the least, and it does a relatively good job delivering. Keating does an excellent job of cultivating suspense and helping it to build as Tom and Lovely’s circumstances become increasingly mysterious and perilous. (The haunting atmospheric musical score by Giona Ostinelli really adds to this, and is worth celebrating in its own right.)

Despite the fact that Ritual definitely leverages tropes any horror fan would be familiar with (e.g. couple in peril, possible cult, and seedy hotel room), it manages to remain original in its treatment of those tropes. The plotline is well thought out enough that it keeps you glued to the screen. It’s filled with genuine shocks and thoughtfully filmed sequences. It keeps the viewer guessing all the way to the end. Cates, Summerscales, and many of the supporting players turn in excellent performances as well.

The only real issue here is that certain portions of Ritual suffer from pacing issues. A driving sequence that goes on a little too long, a borderline unnecessary conversation through a door when Tom arrives to help Lovely, and a few similar scenes cause the otherwise lively pace of the film to slow way down at those points. There are also a few logic issues that leave viewers momentarily asking the wrong types of questions, especially toward the beginning of the film, but Ritual makes a great recovery once the action really gets underway.

Ritual is well done enough overall, that you can easily forgive it for having a few flaws. The more information you’re given about the truth of Tom and Lovely’s strange situation, the more you just really want to see how it all turns out. You genuinely enjoy the great majority of the ride to boot. So, is Ritual a perfect horror film that will go down in genre history as such? No. Is it appealingly entertaining and well worth your time? Absolutely, especially if you’re a fan of After Dark’s signature approach to horror.

 

SIMILAR MOVIES REVIEWS

OTHER MOVIES REVIEWS

Within

2016

There is little to say about this film, a banal story (how many horror films begin with a family moving?) and also copied, it recalls for example "Crawlspace" by David Schmoeller from 1986 with Klaus Kinski, it offers some small surprises but not even very original. The film takes a long time to get going and given the initial sunny atmosphere you immediately wonder if it is really a horror and in fact the disturbing scenes are very few, perhaps girls will like it more given a certain romanticism à la "The Phantom Of The Opera". The actors are good looking and also quite... Read More

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

1962

Based on the novel by Henry Farrell released in 1960, the film is considered the progenitor of the psycho-biddy subgenre where the protagonists are mentally unstable elderly women, ready to terrorize the unfortunate ones on duty. Playing the disturbing sisters in this psychological thriller, a small jewel of genre cinema, are an unforgettable Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, great Hollywood stars now in their twilight years. Despite being free of bloody or macabre scenes, the film is a hallucinatory journey through sadism, madness and family resentments... Claustrophobic,... Read More

Let It Snow

2020

A soft horror film produced in Ukraine, very beautiful on a visual level thanks to the spectacular locations in Georgia... a glacial setting, which instills no small amount of anguish and chill in the heart. Filmed in a classic style, it is a rather simple and short story that flows quickly without leaving any particular shivers, but some scenes are particularly anxiety-inducing and an unbearable and disturbing Christmas song acts as a background. The protagonist Ivanna Sakhno is very good.

Halloween Ends

2022

The film closes the David Gordon Green trilogy that began in 2018 and continued in 2021 with Halloween Kills, it is branded Blumhouse and this should be the last chapter (but will it really be like that we all wonder) of the saga that began in 1978 by John Carpenter. The era of Michael Myers ends, the most irrepressible killer in the history of horror cinema ever, mentor of every bloodthirsty masked homicidal maniac who came after him. There is certainly the intent to pay homage to the dark atmospheres of the progenitor film but also the desire to surprise, by inserting an... Read More

Immaculate

2024

Religious horror without demoniacs or exorcisms, played by the new American movie star Sydney Sweeney who also produces here and is the fulcrum of this film... she is perfect in the role with her angelic face that however in the ending, now a cult of this film, is transfigured thus becoming a great "scream queen" almost on the level of Isabelle Adjani in "Possession". Bloody tribute to the European horror of the 70s but more interested in the psychological aspect of the genre, it has the merit of showing without reticence the ecclesiastical community as a bunch of... Read More