Five university friends—Phil, Dom, Hutch, Luke, and Rob—meet at a pub and discuss plans for a group lad's trip. Rob suggests hiking in Sweden, but gets rebuffed. Afterward, Luke and Rob enter a shop to purchase alcohol, but interrupt a robbery in progress. Luke hides while Rob becomes frozen with fear as the thieves antagonize him for his valuables. Luke nearly intervenes, but decides against it before the thieves kill Rob for refusing to relinquish his wedding ring and disobeying their demands. Six months later, the remaining four embark on a hiking trip along the Kungsleden in northern Sweden in Rob's memory. At least a day later Dom injures his knee. Hutch suggests they cut through the forest rather than use the longer marked trail in the hopes of sparing Dom any further suffering. Upon entering the forest however, the group encounters strange phenomena, including a gutted elk hanging from several branches and strange symbols carved in the trees. As night falls, a torrential rainstorm forces them to find shelter. They come upon an abandoned cabin, so they break in and stay for the night. Inside, they find necklaces bearing similar symbols and a wooden effigy of a decapitated human torso with antlers for hands. The next morning, the group are shocked awake from nightmares to find Luke's chest bleeding from strange puncture wounds and Phil kneeling naked, praying to the effigy. Disturbed and puzzled by their own unconscious actions, the group tries to find a way out. While discerning their location, Luke spots a large figure amongst the trees, but Dom doubts him. In their ensuing argument, Dom brings up the past, calling Luke a coward for letting Rob die to save himself, escaping without even so much as a scratch on him. Later that night, Luke is suddenly awakened by Phil's screams. While investigating, he finds Hutch's tent empty and partially collapsed. The remaining three men rush deeper into the woods to search for him, but by dawn, they realize that they are lost and unable to locate their campsite. While continuing their search without their supplies, they find Hutch gutted and impaled on tree branches. After giving him an impromptu burial, Phil is suddenly dragged away by an unseen creature. Despite realizing the creature's been stalking them the entire time, Luke and Dom have little choice but make a run for it, the creature giving chase. They find a path lined with torches leading to a small settlement and rush into a cottage to hide. While barricading themselves inside, they're knocked unconscious by someone within. When they awake, they find themselves restrained in a cellar. An elderly woman enters and inspects Luke's puncture marks, revealing she bears a similar marking. On her way out, she orders two men to take Dom upstairs. A younger woman enters and explains that preparations are being made for a sacrifice. Sometime later, a beaten Dom is returned to the basement. He tells Luke that he is to be sacrificed to the creature, urging him to find a way out and destroy the village, burn it all to the ground, before he too is sacrificed. Amidst the ritual, Dom has a vision of his wife emerging from the forest, not realizing it's the creature until it impales him on a nearby tree. Desperate to escape, Luke breaks his own thumb to partially free himself from his restraints, but gets interrupted by the young woman. When he asks about the creature, she explains that it is a Jötunn, a bastard son of Loki and an ancient god-like entity from Scandinavian mythology that the cult provides sacrifices to in return for freedom from pain and immortality. Luke has been chosen and is to either submit and worship to it too or be sacrificed. After she leaves, Luke fully frees himself and ventures upstairs. Armed with a torch, he finds a twisted congregation of mummified worshipers. He sets them alight, burning the cabin and attracting the Jötunn. Luke finds a hunting rifle and heads downstairs, running into and killing a follower before taking his axe along the way. The enraged Jötunn kills the young woman while Luke shoots at it and escapes. It pursues him, crippling his mind with hallucinations of Rob's killing before catching him and forcing him to his knees, offering him a chance to submit. Twice Luke refuses to kneel to it, then as he raises up in defiance he strikes it with the axe, briefly incapacitating it. Following hallucinatory sign-posts and rays of sunlight, he emerges in an open field. Unable to leave the forest, the Jötunn roars in anger while Luke shouts/roars back in triumph before heading towards a paved road.
Cast
Rafe Spall as Luke
Arsher Ali as Phil
Robert James-Collier as Hutch
Sam Troughton as Dom
Production, release and reception
The film was shot on location in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania. The film premiered in September 2017 at the Toronto International Film Festival, where its international distribution rights were sold to Netflix for $4.75 million. The film was theatrically released in the United Kingdom by eOne Films on 13 October 2017 and grossed over $1 million during its run. It was later released to Netflix on 9 February 2018.
Critical reception
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 73% based on 86 reviews, and an average rating of 6.1/10. The website's critical consensus states: "Director David Bruckner makes evocative use of the Scandinavian setting and a dedicated cast to deliver a handsome — if familiar — horror story." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 57 out of 100, based on 18 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Katie Walsh of the Los Angeles Times praised the film and said that it was "Efficient and highly effective in its style, relying on sound, creepy production design, and the men's own fear and misjudgments to create the sense of pervasive doom." RogerEbert.com writer Simon Abrams scored the film a 2/4, saying "The most disappointing kind of bad horror movie: the kind that's too smart to be this dumb." Kyle Kohner of The Playlist gave the film a negative review, saying "David Bruckner had all the ingredients for a horror masterpiece - deceptively scenic wilderness shots, great character camaraderie, dreadful atmosphere/setting- but The Ritual winds up a missed opportunity."
