Wednesday, February 07, 2018

The Sacrifices Men Make

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I grew up in the 1980s, a perfectly good time to cut one's teeth on Slasher Movies and Satanic Panic, and those are the two forces that slam together to mostly good effect in The Ritual, the latest horror flick from director David Bruckner. Bruckner was behind 2007's The Signal (which I remember liking, although it's been some time) and more recently portions of the anthology flicks V/H/S and Southbound. And sure enough Bruckner was born the same year as me - after watching The Ritual I could tell that we've got the same set of influences mushed inside our brains. 

I remember going out into the woods behind my cousin's house on nights after scanning oh let's say Slaughter High for boobies (for my cousin) and butts (for me), thinking about all the devil mantras the media was saying was coming off of Twisted Sister records, corrupting Young People's Brains - I remember us going out there in his rickety tent and playing pre-Blair-Witch goofs on each other, rattling sticks, howling at the night.

The Ritual brought all of that stuff back - it's why for me this sort of Nature Horror will always be the most effective. Not only are there Jason Voorheeses wandering the woodlands but there are warlocks with stone-tools set to sacrifice our virginal pieces too! The woods are a heckuva horror show, dark and full of terrors, and The Ritual in its best moments taps into them jitters.

The movie is kind of The Descent if The Descent had starred ineffectual wussy men instead of hardcore kickass womenfolk - after a tragedy a group of friends head on an off-the-grid field-trip and quickly find themselves in way over their heads with things going bump. There's the lead character, most intimately involved in the tragedy - here that would be Luke (Rafe Spall), whose very manhood has come under question. His friends (including a eye-poppingly attractive turn from Downton Abbey's gay footman himself Robert James-Collier, I should add) are trying to be supportive but when the shit, as it must, begins smacking that fan...

I wish The Ritual had varied off its path a little more like its characters do, and gotten lost in its own madness - it has great wacky surprises in store with its monster design, which is always welcome, and it looks like it cost way more than I am guessing it cost. But the through-line is always there from its start, and the film never delivers the gut-punch I kept hoping it might. Still it's got jumps, and monsters, and that gorgeous gay footman too, so it's worth wandering these woods with all that in mind.
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