[Rik]

Originally Posted by keirarts

The ritual

Went to see kingsman 2. My mother borrowed the first film while I was away and genuinely seemed to like it. She doesn't like going to the cinema on her own so I went along. After she left in a taxi I walked back into the cinema and bought a ticket to this. I wasn't sure what to expect but after watching that bundle of disappointment for the second time but I thought what the hell.
Ralph Spall, who is becoming steadily more like his father year on year (this is not a bad thing mind) plays Luke who with his friends plan yearly boys getaways to places like Vegas and Amsterdam. This year after seeing one of their old college friends brutally murdered and failing to do anything, Luke, plagued by guilt, heads off with his friends to go hiking in Sweden. While there one of the group injures his leg and the friends decide to take a shortcut through some dense Forrest. Naturally this being a horror movie its an awful idea and pretty soon the group find themselves in a hunters cabin where there is some kind of pagan idol. Things go downhill as the group find themselves hunted by something in the wood.
Sadly the screen I saw this in was empty. Kingsman 2 was still quite busy.This pretty much explains why so much we see in cinema's today is so bad. The ritual, while employing a lot of familiar horror tropes, uses them well and crafts something that feels genuinely fresh and inventive. Sadly if no one see's it Jigsaw is probably going to do solid business and Hollywood will decide to churn out dozens more of those instead. Then we'll get endless moaning on social media about why nothing interesting is being made.
If your Vue does this for £4.99 or you have one of those cineworld passes get this watched. The soundmix is great, there's no 'the lead character was just insane' cop outs and we get a well realised creature that is wisely introduced in stages and doesn't just run at the camera constantly shouting loudly like pennywise, or feature endless jump scares of cats leaping out of cupboards.

Watched this today and can highly recommend it, yeah it’s nothing truly original but in this case that isn’t a bad thing at all. It’s out on DVD tomorrow, and if there’s no blu ray coming or available overseas, I’ll be picking it up.
4/5