The Ritual

Been hearing a lot of talk about this flick on FB so...well, that's kinda my thing. Watch a movie, write about it, post some pics, blahdee blahdee blah. Here I am on a fucking Tuesday, day off of work, I'm coated in a thick crack-glaze of snot and cold germs, there's no goddamned hot water in this dump so a shower is out - fuck it, a movie it is, then.

Five British Mates go out to the store
a junkie stabs one and then there were four.

Sorry, my brain is steeped to the tits in Dayquil and keeps doing weird things. The four mates in question are Hutch (the handsome one), Luke (the guilt-ridden one), Dom (the whiny twat, which rhymes with prat and both apply) and Phil (the vaguely Mideastern looking one.) Their dead friend is Rob, the best of them, who so desperately wanted to go hiking through Sweden and Norway with his best friends on their next holiday. But because Luke was a total pisspants coward, Rob died needlessly upon inadvertently interrupting a liquor store hold up. Luke blames himself. His friends do too, although nobody says this aloud. Six months later, Luke packs all of his guilt in his backpack and trudges into the North with his remaining mates. There's your backstory, now on with the show.

Yeah, this is welcoming af.

These woods and hills bear a suspicious resemblance to Fanghorn Forest. And since Andy Serkis was a producer, I immediately suspect New Zealand standing in for Sweden. But I'm wrong. It's Romania. Okay, fine. Why couldn't they have just filmed in Sweden? Or Norway? Not finding fault, just curious.

Okay so in short order, the Twat - being a prat - takes a pratfall and immediately starts whining about his man baby booboo. Hey, someone had to fall and hurt themselves, and there's no women around so we'll go with the next best thing - an overweight, bespectacled bag of lard with a gaping cryhole. Another guy (I already forget who) points to a map and basically says: "Oh hey look! A shortcut through the spooky woods, let's go die there!"

Nordic God or coat rack? You decide.

In short order, the guys fuck off into the Stock Footage Forest and immediately discover a whole shitpile of cast off from about a dozen other horror films. They find an elk hanging in the trees and weird runes all over the place (Blair Witch). Then it starts to rain and they happen upon The Evil Dead cabin. It's leaky and long-abandoned, and there's a human torso fashioned out of sticks with antlers for hands just chilling around upstairs that looks a lot like one of my abandoned art projects. The night is dark and stormy. The storm is dark and nighty. And the dark is night and stormy.

Luke the Coward wakes up abruptly, knee deep in a nightmare about watching his friend Rob get killed all over again. His other friends are having similar experiences: Dom is crouched in a corner, screaming his wife's name. Hutch has righteously pissed himself. And Phil is upstairs, naked, prone before the Mervyn's mannequin from Hell as if in prayer. Understandably freaked out, the guys decide to blow the woods and make for the nearest pub. In the meantime, Luke's resemblance to Guy Pearce in Ravenous is starting to annoy me.

Four dumbass hikers lost in the trees
one gets gutted and then there were three.

Amazingly, it's Hutch the Handsome who dies first. But not before Luke gets called out for his cowardice in front of everyone and blamed for Rob's death. So there's your motivation: coward must somehow face his fear and conquer it. Yadda yadda yadda.

Three frightened hikers don't know what to do
one's eaten by a monster and then there were two.

Phil is the next to go down (or rather, up - as, into the branches of a tree, his guts unzipped) leaving the Twat and the Coward to make a run for it. They slam headfirst into Haggis's shack in Pumpkinhead and are promptly taken prisoner. It turns out there's a bunch of immortal Swedes living deep in the woods, worshipping a bastard deity without a name (they say they don't say its name, but if no one ever says it, wouldn't it have been forgotten by now?) who forces them to worship it and offer it sacrifices in return for unending lives looking like the forebears of the Deliverance locals who never got around to emigrating. Also, there's no plumbing and everyone looks like they smell really bad. If I'm going to be immortal, I want hot water and soap, okay?

The Twat and the Coward don't even have a gun
The Twat becomes monster food and then there was one.

Yeah, the Twat gets the King Kong treatment, stripped to the waist and tied to a pole. You'd think that the sight of that flabby, hairy midsection would put Mr. Elk Deity right off, but it doesn't. Now it's just the Coward, I mean Guy Pearce, I mean Luke. Anyway, at long last, our monster emerges from the shadows and...it's a really big moose. Or maybe an elk. With a male torso for a face and a sort of Jawa hood with glowy eyes. Now we see what Luke is up against, and it's borderline goofy.

But you can't kill a Nordic God - they're kinda immune to that whole death thing - so he really accomplishes nothing. I mean, they've been building up this whole macho manly "man up and face your fears" bullshit for an hour and twenty minutes, pumping you up for the Big Final Confrontation between Mighty Elk Man and wishy washy spineless nobody. You're totally expecting a bare-chested, two fisted, greased up showdown with nunchucks and flamethrowers and maybe an Uzi, lots of grunting and bellowing and sperm-fueled rage. But in the end, you get a smallish house fire, a halfhearted whack with an axe and a "run away run away!" sequence worthy of Monty Python.

Coward makes a run for it, monster doesn't follow
and this whole movie left me feeling kinda hollow.   

Shit, next time have Luke accidentally wander into Gaahl's house. That would be scarier.