Despite William Friedkin’s best efforts to shut the door on the subject over 50 years ago, religious horror tales of demonic possession persist, with many recent examples enjoying a moment in the pop culture spotlight. Look only to the most recent history. In 2023, Russell Crowe motored his way into the hearts of audiences on his Vespa scooter in The Pope’s Exorcist, which now has a sequel up for consideration. Last year, there was Immaculate, which saw Sydney Sweeney literally give birth to the Antichrist, and The First Omen, which tormented another young woman while twisting itself into a pretzel to serve as a prequel to Richard Donner’s 1976 chiller, The Omen. Despite this obvious glut of the subgenre, Hollywood clearly believes in the stability and financial viability of these clerical freak-out pictures, and so now we have The Ritual, which is yet another take on a young woman who may or may not be inhabited by a malevolent being. (The title is not to be confused with David Bruckner’s 2017 film of the same, which had no overt religious connections, or at least none based in Catholicism.) Touted as “the most thoroughly documented case of demonic possession in American history,” director David Midell, who co-scripts with producer Enrico Natale, attempts to bring some “based on a true story” street cred to the picture, clearly hoping audiences will take this film seriously if it’s actually a matter of public record. Trouble is, if you’ve seen one exorcist movie, you’ve seen them all, as The Ritual brings absolutely nothing new to the table that might upset that predictability, engaging in routine sequences of hysteria and priests grappling with their faith and offering little in the way of terror or compelling dramaturgy.
The setting is Earling, Iowa, and the specific time is October 1928. Father Joseph Steiger (Dan Stevens) runs the local church’s Sunday Service, reporting for his weekly duty despite the tragic and recent loss of his brother. The grief has Steiger facing a crisis of faith, but that’s pushed aside for more pressing matters, as a young woman named Emma Schmidt (Abigail Cowen) begins exhibiting signs of spiritual possession, necessitating an exorcism to expel whatever evil lies within her. On the approval of Mother Superior (Patricia Heaton) and Bishop Edwards (Patrick Fabian), the exorcism is to take place at Steiger’s church, and it will be overseen by Father Theophilus Riesinger (Al Pacino), a German-American Capuchin friar. Accompanied by Sister Rose (Ashley Greene), Steiger is to be present and document all occurrences during Emma’s extended ritual, but the intensity of the young girl’s predicament proves to be too much for Steiger to handle, who is pushed to a breaking point the longer the ritual carries on.
Most immediately damning is that there’s a colossal strategic error to The Ritual’s formal design, and it eventually sinks the picture entirely. Midell and his cinematographer, Adam Biddle, having opted to shoot the film in an intensive verité style, going handheld for the film’s entire duration to add a “you are there” sense of urgency to the proceedings, load the frame with shaky camera movements and copious zooms. The intent is clear, harmonizing this style with the factual foundation of the narrative, but the execution is decidedly clunky, as Midell struggles to generate much in the way of fright, especially when his film’s aesthetic resembles a standard episode of The Office. When all else fails, Midell simply falls back on rote jump scares and an obnoxious sound design, desperate to cattle-prod viewers awake. The Ritual ends up being a showcase for the lack of imagination behind the camera, and performances also do little to rise to the occasion, with Stevens largely relegated to standing in a corner and looking increasingly concerned, while Pacino leans too heavily on a broad, Eastern European accent that functions mostly to make him sound uncannily like Topol from Fiddler on the Roof.
There is at least a nugget of an idea at the center of The Ritual that is potentially gripping, as Steiger’s increasing disillusionment with the church following his brother’s death coincides with the genuine documented treatment of people with mental illness that were dismissed as possession, resulting in many cases of abuse and even death. But this idea is never explored in full, as much of The Ritual is instead structured with scenes of Riesinger leading the charge as Emma oozes bodily fluids, writhes in pain, and speaks in several voices before promptly falling unconscious. Rinse and repeat. The sessions grow increasingly violent, as furniture is magically flung across the room, a wrist is crushed, and poor Sister Rose nearly has her scalp ripped off by Emma’s superhuman strength. And in this, Midell does deserve some credit for wasting no time getting to business, briskly and brutally running through 90 minutes of incident. But the pathological familiarity remains an impossible hurdle, with The Ritual offering absolutely nothing new or exciting to appreciate. The film is simply a cheap rehash of iconic moments from far superior films of the same ilk, rendering the entire feature an exercise in purloinment.
DIRECTOR: David Midell; CAST: Al Pacino, Dan Stevens, Abigail Cowen, Ashely Greene; DISTRIBUTOR: XYZ Films; IN THEATERS: June 6; STREAMING: June 27 RUNTIME: 1 hr. 38 min.
Comments are closed.