Few means and a lot of tension in one of the best pieces of folk horror that have been seen recently. ‘The ritual’currently in the Netflix catalogis a 2017 British film that spices up a few well-known elements (for example, it has a lot of ‘The Blair Witch Project’ although it goes along very different paths) with other very novel ones. The perfect balance between the usual tropes of genre cinema and a few surprises that distance it from the hackneyed.
‘El ritual’ tells us how a group of friends from university who haven’t seen each other for a long time meet again to make a hiking trip through the harsh mountains of Sweden to pay tribute to one of them, who died a violent death. When a strange presence begins to harass them, they will have to question why they are really there.
Raised as a psychological horror film but also as a monster movie who uses Norse mythology with tremendous intelligence,’The ritual’ does not give the viewer respite thanks to the oppressive scenery of the wild areas of Sweden. The mystery that forests naturally carry is the perfect seasoning for a film by David Bruckner, who cut his teeth in magnificent episodic films like ‘V/H/S’ or ‘Southbound’ and who will direct the next version of Hellraiser.
The excellent tension built on the basis of superb flashbacks and an almost theatrical use of the sets is also supported by the cast: Rafe Spall won the award for Best Actor in the Official Selection in Sitges, and the rest of the group of hikers are also the height of the challenge. A movie on Netflix to watch with full camping gas.
