John Evans (Rio Dewanto) wakes up in a shallow grave. He doesn't remember his name or how he got there. Over the course of a day, he finds that his wife is dead and his children are missing. Or...are they?
Ritual strives for some originality in its stalk-and-kill formula. While it succeeds in having an original framework for the killer - John is the killer; he goes to elaborate lengths to pick a target family, kill the father, then, with the help of drug-induced amnesia, make himself believe that it is his wife who has died and that the children are really killers stalking him - the film fails to be interesting enough to recommend. There is some nausea inducing shaky cam. There are numerous scenes of John screaming, sweating or drooling. The killer's plot relies on many coincidences to function, the biggest one being "what if amnesiac John doesn't head in the right direction and wanders out of the woods?" And the ending is unnecessarily long. After seeing John go through the paces and kill the last members of his "victim" family, we see how he sets up the next one. This goes on for about 20 minutes and is unnecessary as any viewer who was paying attention can figure out the hows and whys.
It's not a bad movie. I respect what it is trying to accomplish; a new take on a well-worn story. But, it strikes me that this film would've been better as a thirty-minute short. As it is, the film feels unnecessarily drawn out. It's on Netflix streaming, so if you that, check it out. Otherwise, I have a hard time recommending this film.
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