THE RITUAL. Leans Into an Old-fashioned Strain of Horror

A journey into the forest that turns into a descent into hell—both literally and metaphorically—is such an overused trope that it feels closer to parody than genuine terror. For a long stretch, The Ritual deliberately leans into an old-fashioned strain of horror, one steeped in familiar elements: one character injures his leg, forcing the group to change course; strange symbols carved into trees; an abandoned cabin; unsettling noises that appear only at night. Yet the film is handled with enough conviction that its derivative nature never truly gets in the way—if anything, the familiarity helps draw the viewer deeper into the characters’ mounting dread.

This British horror film, acquired by Netflix, could easily have worked on the big screen had it been given the chance. Even so, with headphones on and the lights dimmed, viewers watching at home should have no reason to complain about a lack of proper genre thrills.

David Bruckner’s film opens with a brutally effective dramatic sequence that establishes the emotional baggage carried by the group of friends who later decide to go hiking in the mountains of northern Sweden. Five men in their mid-thirties are drinking in a pub late at night when two of them decide to stop by a convenience store on the way home. Their bad luck leads them straight into a robbery carried out by nervous—and, as it turns out, deadly—criminals. Luke manages to hide, but Robert is less fortunate and is hacked to death with a machete.

Six months later, Luke joins the remaining three friends on a trip into the mountains to honor the memory of the man they lost. The knowledge that Luke failed to help Robert—and that this failure may have cost him his life—hangs heavily over every interaction. Before long, one of the men injures his knee, and another suggests cutting through the forest to save time and distance. It quickly becomes clear that staying on the trail would have been the wiser choice. First they discover a disemboweled deer suspended high between the trees, and then an abandoned cabin containing a headless human effigy with antlers in place of arms.

This is merely the beginning of their nightmare, but for a long time Bruckner is less interested in the danger lurking in the woods than in the memory of Robert’s death and Luke’s crushing sense of guilt. Luke is played by Rafe Spall, whom I still most vividly associate with his role as the foolish biologist in Prometheus, treating an alien creature like a harmless pet. Here, he is considerably more sensible, opting to run at the first opportunity. Still, The Ritual is very much a story about what happens to a man when he is forced to confront his own fear.

Bruckner previously directed a remarkable segment of the anthology horror Southbound, in which a driver hits a young woman and attempts to save her, all while unknowingly serving as a tool of supernatural forces. That episode worked both as a nerve-shredding thriller with a genuinely surprising conclusion and as an illustration of the idea that every wrongdoing must be paid for—preferably through personal sacrifice, with peace of mind offered as a possible reward. Who decides whether we deserve it? The very same supernatural entities that torment us in the first place. At its core, The Ritual tells a similar story.

Here, the characters face a monstrosity drawn from ancient belief systems—something that would feel perfectly at home in the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft or Arthur Machen, had either been born in Sweden. Once the film shifts from survival story to full-blooded horror, it gains a renewed sense of primal fear but loses some of its tragic dimension. It stops being a drama about cowardice, about struggling to cope with it, and about the erosion of trust among friends who slowly realize that their relationships will never be the same again.

The groundwork for such reflections is laid almost perfectly, yet Bruckner and screenwriter Joe Barton—who adapted Adam Nevill’s novel—become too quickly fascinated by the mysteries of the Scandinavian forest and the genre trappings of horror. Too little space is left for the deepening crisis of trust within the group. In fact, it barely exists: only one character openly criticizes Luke’s behavior, while the other two choose silence to preserve a fragile status quo. As the film approaches its finale, the resolution becomes increasingly apparent, and its simplicity—if not outright timidity—stands out. Only by facing our fear head-on, the film suggests, can we come to terms with our guilt. This idea has been explored many times before, often with greater effect—The Descent being just one example.

And so we return to the film’s reliance on familiar patterns, which I mentioned at the outset. The Ritual brings nothing new to the table conceptually, instead betting on strong execution and the creation of a suitably oppressive atmosphere—at times reminiscent of Ben Wheatley’s Kill List. It aims to test the viewer, daring them to turn on every light in the house after hearing something unsettling. Bruckner has a firm command of horror filmmaking and the courage to show evil in all its grotesque glory, risking ridicule from those who expected a more grounded, realistic approach.

The sooner one accepts The Ritual’s modest—and ultimately squandered—ambitions, the more enjoyable and frightening the experience becomes.