SHERDOG MOVIE CLUB: Week 103: The Ritual

[MusterX]

As a Lovecraft fan I object to you besmirching his name with this comparison. H.P. could built incredible tension. Unlike this film.

As I said, Lovecraft was a true wordsmith and I don't use that term lightly. In fact, so much was he a wordsmith that many people simply can't even read his works, they just can't stick with it because its a completely different style and presentation to the way more modern authors present their words. I would never put a movie like The Ritual on the level of the literary stylings of H.P. Lovecraft. Still though, the movie had a very Locraftian feel to it by the end.

H.P. is always telling stories about creeping into some long forgotten, deep, dark place where terrible things then happen to the main character because of some ancient evil. I mean, that's the entire basis of the Cthulu mythos.

Now here is the thing, if you want to call it that. In H.P. Lovecraft's stories, the main characters never truly understood what they were dealing with until the end. The slowly became enveloped by darkness, by evil, until there was no escape. Be it Dagon, or the Nameless City, or The Statement of Randolf Carter, or many others, we always have an intrepid scientist or explorer that is descending into a dark crypt or into an undiscovered ancient city and slowly, over time, catching only glimpses of the evil, even hearing its approach in the distance as maybe a barking dog, is it revealed.

I had this sort of feeling at the end of The Ritual when the reveal happened. It went from man these crazy forest people are crazy to, holy shit they are worshiping an ancient evil that has come for them. I'm not saying it is on the level of Lovecraft, I'm saying it had that feel to me and its why I really like this film.

 

[MusterX]

Wow, that trailer was pretty unsettling. That spooked me more than this movie did. The idea of vanishing into remote wilderness is quite harrowing.

I’m getting a memory jog, but I remember you (or I think it was you) once posting in a thread about two young ladies going missing in South America on a trail, and all that was found was like one of the girl’s foot in a shoe. I remember that freaking me out. I like nature and hiking, but stories like that want me to be armed to the teeth if I’m hiking somewhere super remote.

Yea that's crazy shit, I posted a few years ago about Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon disappearing in a south American jungle. Crazy story. I mean we know they are dead but what exactly happened is a mystery. If you look into that Missing 411 stuff you will find that over the decades its been hundreds, thousands of missing persons that were never solved in American national parks. Alaska btw is particularly bad in that the people who live there just accept that sometimes people go into the forest to chop wood and are never seen again.

 

[MusterX]

Meh....but kinda good. Like many have said a little trite, but well executed. I enjoyed the mood and cinematography. Thought the acting was good. Didn't care too much for the characters. Critter was fun and certainly not disappointing. Old lady was hard core creepy. Glad I watched it. Would have been more engaging on the big screen.

See now I didn't feel that way at all. At one point as the four of them were trekking through the forest I was hopping they all went through a good scary time then made it out to survive, unlike their friend at the Liquor Store. Then, Hutch got snatched away and nailed to a tree and I thought, damn, what a bummer, there will be no happy endings in Game of Thrones. I really felt then that nobody was going to survive at that point and I gotta say I didn't like it. I thought the characters were believable and were actually behaving as friends do. When the guys stop in the forest to have a little argument and punching in the midst of being hunted I thought, yea, I have friends who also would do that shit. So I kinda felt the connection between the four guys was one of the strengths of the movie.

 

[the muntjac]

I’m just taking a moment to reflect on @MusterX feelings for this movie going from this -

To this -




Pleasant surprises are always fun.

 

[the muntjac]

Yea that's crazy shit, I posted a few years ago about Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon disappearing in a south American jungle. Crazy story. I mean we know they are dead but what exactly happened is a mystery. If you look into that Missing 411 stuff you will find that over the decades its been hundreds, thousands of missing persons that were never solved in American national parks. Alaska btw is particularly bad in that the people who live there just accept that sometimes people go into the forest to chop wood and are never seen again.

This is nuts. I guess I was more inclined to believe that greater efforts would be put into searching areas that have higher frequencies of people going missing in.

Note to self, don’t go hiking.

 

[MusterX]

I’m just taking a moment to reflect on @MusterX feelings for this movie going from this -

To this -




Pleasant surprises are always fun.

Yea, I had to eat my own words, its a hard lesson to learn let me tell you. I really did not expect to like the film as much as I ended up liking it. I'm not saying its a masterpiece but it is absolutely worthy of a view.

 

[MusterX]

This is nuts. I guess I was more inclined to believe that greater efforts would be put into searching areas that have higher frequencies of people going missing in.

Note to self, don’t go hiking.

I can't remember where but I've seen a story about it somewhere talking about how there are clusters where more people seem to go missing in remote national parks and over time its like, a shit ton of missing people, hundreds in the same general area that are never seen again. The parks and authorities keep that stuff pretty quite though. You hear of a search every now and then but the total number of times it happens is pretty high. Check this out, the government doesn't keep track of who goes missing on federal land and if they do they won't tell.

Government doesn't keep track of people who disappear on federal land

David Paulides believes the American public would be spooked if it knew how many people were mysteriously disappearing every year in the country's national parks. People have gone missing while poking around near a gift shop, running with a friend, and wearing professional survival gear. And while Paulides could be dismissed as a conspiracy theorist—he tells of secret meetings with park rangers, bodies inexplicably reappearing, and a cover-up by the National Park Service—Outside reports there is something to his claims in a massive piece about persons who've gone missing on federal public land. The government doesn't actually keep track of how many people have disappeared on the land it owns. That leaves it up to civilian experts and people like Paulides. Their best estimate: at least 1,600 disappearances that can't be easily explained on the country's 640 million acres of federal land. But it may be far more than that.
http://www.newser.com/story/239750/hundreds-enter-us-national-parks-never-to-return.html


Furthermore, check this out.

https://www.outsideonline.com/2164446/leave-no-trace

Obviously I'm not saying they were taken by a Jotun monster but the deep forests can be a dangerous place to be.

 

[the muntjac]

I can't remember where but I've seen a story about it somewhere talking about how there are clusters where more people seem to go missing in remote national parks and over time its like, a shit ton of missing people, hundreds in the same general area that are never seen again. The parks and authorities keep that stuff pretty quite though. You hear of a search every now and then but the total number of times it happens is pretty high. Check this out, the government doesn't keep track of who goes missing on federal land and if they do they won't tell.

Government doesn't keep track of people who disappear on federal land

David Paulides believes the American public would be spooked if it knew how many people were mysteriously disappearing every year in the country's national parks. People have gone missing while poking around near a gift shop, running with a friend, and wearing professional survival gear. And while Paulides could be dismissed as a conspiracy theorist—he tells of secret meetings with park rangers, bodies inexplicably reappearing, and a cover-up by the National Park Service—Outside reports there is something to his claims in a massive piece about persons who've gone missing on federal public land. The government doesn't actually keep track of how many people have disappeared on the land it owns. That leaves it up to civilian experts and people like Paulides. Their best estimate: at least 1,600 disappearances that can't be easily explained on the country's 640 million acres of federal land. But it may be far more than that.
http://www.newser.com/story/239750/hundreds-enter-us-national-parks-never-to-return.html


Furthermore, check this out.

https://www.outsideonline.com/2164446/leave-no-trace

Obviously I'm not saying they were taken by a Jotun monster but the deep forests can be a dangerous place to be.

Taken from that second link you provided -

Collin’s brother Tanner set up a GoFundMe site that paid for a helicopter to search for five hours, and a volunteer flew his fixed-wing aircraft in the canyon multiple times. A guy with a drone buzzed the steep embankments along Highway 17, the closest paved road, and the rock formation Faith, which has a cross on top.

This is kinda what I was alluding to with a helicopter flying over where the four friends were last suspected to be, and the pilot or whoever seeing a weird little village that’s not on any charted map.

I picture them landing down and asking the worshippers, “Hi there, have you seen any lost hikers around here? What’s that? Hmm, I don’t think I know that language. Hey! Why’s there a guy tied up to that log? Do you hear that? Holy sweet Jesus, what the hell is that thing?! Arrrggghhh-“

 

[FrontNakedChoke]

I'm not gonna lie... This movie scared the shit out of me lol.

At least for the first 3/4's of the movie. Really creepy atmosphere when you didn't know what was stalking them yet. The part when they stay at that house was sp00ky. The whole witchcraft in the forest thing freaks me out lol. Just the fact that you know they're screwed no matter what and keep walking into traps. Elements of Blair witch for sure. And when they find their friends in the trees, yikes.

(btw did the main guy reminded anyone else of British Ryan Reynolds?)

Anyways, I really enjoyed it for the most part. I found the suspense was killed a bit when we meet the monster and it's worshippers, but the creature was an interesting design. I still think I would have preferred it be left undiscovered, but that's just me.

I picked this one because it looked like the tamest of the three and I'm sometimes a pussy when it comes to certain scary movies, but this one was scarier than I expected. The part where their friend is naked praying to that thing upstairs in the house really shook me for some reason lol.

Worth the watch. Glad I checked it out.

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

Still though, the movie had a very Locraftian feel to it by the end.

I hear you. You're right about ancient evil and Lovecraft.

 

[europe1]

New Enemy List:
the muntjac
Tufts
Cubo de Sangre


New Friend List
MusterX
FrontNakedChoke

I liked the juxtaposition of the liquor store and the woods. I thought those set pieces looked really neat,

Yeah definitively. Creative touch.

I was expecting Luke to save Dom from the worshipers. We see that Luke is haunted by freezing up during the liquor store robbery, and he feels guilt from not doing anything when Rob gets killed by the robbers. I expected him to find redemption by deciding to not sit idly by while Dom is being tortured and offered up to the Jotunn. Dom is the one who was most critical about Luke not doing anything to save Rob, which caused a rift between them. It would have been poetic had Luke ended up choosing fight over flight to rescue Dom. I feel this would have brought Luke's dilemma full circle and provided a better closure. Instead, the movie shows Luke with the choice to either lay down and accept the Jotunn as his god, or reject it and fight back. He chooses the latter, and this is the way that Luke is shown as redeeming his past cowardice.

Acute observation.

Really, all this did was raise more questions for me. Are we too assume that hikers go missing all the time in these woods, stumble across these people, and then get put up for sacrifice?

Frankly, I think that situations like that are a part of the genre's charm. We're watching unreality here, people. Some times you have to act like you're watching theater and go along with the yarn they are spinning for you.

Let's talk about the creature design.

Being that your name is the muntjac I expected you to write an entire paragraph about rooting for the humongous deer-demon.

Let's talk about the creature design. It's cool. I dig it. It looked like a demonic giraffe with a grim reaper-esque face. This shot was bad ass.

Honestly my first reaction upon seeing it was thinking "wow that looks like something straight out of Parasite Eve 2"

When the guys decided to cut through the forest I immediately thought of An American Werewolf in London

I watched this with my mates and as soon as they diverted from the path I hoarsly cried "Stay off the moors!"

Have we learned nothing from these other movies! Then as they enter the forest and find the cabin and everything starts to happen it took on a very Blair Witch feel because there was stuff hanging from trees and when they were in their tents at night they could hear breaking branches like in Blair Witch. They also were unable to find their way out like in Blair Witch and at this point I thought to myself, I get it, but I'm still liking it.

At the risk of causing blasphemy -- I think this movie handled it's tension a lot better than Blair Witch did. The cultist iconography was way creepy and the strained camradari between the main characters really underpinned it.

The reason why I was so suddenly entertained is because I realized at that moment that the entire thing felt Lovecraftian to me.

If Lovecraft had written this then the cultists would have interbreeded with demon-deers and created the muntjac.

Many people may not have ever read the works of H.P. Lovecraft but he was a tremendous wordsmith

Honestly I find Lovecraft terribly wooden. It's that painstaking, deliberately-carved kind of wooden that is really darn charming in its oddity but I don't really enjoy Uncle Creepy's prose.

@europe1 had told me that he really liked this film and I have to agree. Lovecraft was big on showing the frailty of mortal humans to the ancient ones and this film really delivered something like that for me

Honestly, maybe the most anti-Lovecraft thing in this movie is that the main character actually survives in the end and manages to destroy the cult.

I'm sure there is something about it in Swedish lore

In the movie they say that it's an child of Loki -- the trickster-god who sired many abhorrent monsters. There is nothing in the norse myths that describes a creature like this one though.

One weird thing to me is even after Luke starts burning up the rotting worshippers and torching the cabin, shoots a guy, and then even shoots the monster, the creature is still adamant on trying to get Luke to submit to it. You’d think the creature would be pissed off at him and just easily waste Luke like it has done to everyone else. Heck, it kills the blonde lady without hesitation, and she was as loyal as they come.

Doesn't seem that weird to me. The minds of gods are evil and capricious. It is a creature that has ruled an entire community through fear for over a thousand years. Fear is the manner in which it cows human beings and compels them to venerate it. It seems fitting to me that it would crave subjecting human beings and make them worship it.

Keep in mind, this creature shows them visions of fear. It specifically assults their mind with ghastly hallucinations. It doesn't just want to kill them -- it could do that easily -- it wants to break them, hence all the psychological bombardments. It could chose to just skip the mind-fucked but doesn't. Why? Because it loves it.

And the blonde lady -- shit she failed bro.

According to The Ritual, ancient Scandinavian people who were burdened by emotional pain were sometimes granted an otherworldly escape—their gods sent a nameless beast to ease their suffering. The beast gave every tortured person a choice: Submit and worship it for life, or die in unimaginable pain.

I can't think of any event or creature within Norse lore that would correspond with a description like that.

I picked this one because it looked like the tamest of the three and I'm sometimes a pussy when it comes to certain scary movies, but this one was scarier than I expected. The part where their friend is naked praying to that thing upstairs in the house really shook me for some reason lol.

Yeah me too.

A lot of horror is just about doing something startling and unexpected. That idol was creepy and unsettling to begin with. Waking up and finding your naked mate kowtowing in front of it is just one of those sensations that you have no word for.

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

New Enemy List:
the muntjac
Tufts
Cubo de Sangre

Well, here's hoping you're fickle.

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

If Lovecraft had written this then the cultists would have interbreeded with demon-deers and created the muntjac.

If that's the sequel I'll check it out.

 

[MusterX]

New Enemy List:
the muntjac
Tufts
Cubo de Sangre


New Friend List
MusterX
FrontNakedChoke



Yeah definitively. Creative touch.



Acute observation.



Frankly, I think that situations like that are a part of the genre's charm. We're watching unreality here, people. Some times you have to act like you're watching theater and go along with the yarn they are spinning for you.



Being that your name is the muntjac I expected you to write an entire paragraph about rooting for the humongous deer-demon.



Honestly my first reaction upon seeing it was thinking "wow that looks like something straight out of Parasite Eve 2"

I watched this with my mates and as soon as they diverted from the path I hoarsly cried "Stay off the moors!"



At the risk of causing blasphemy -- I think this movie handled it's tension a lot better than Blair Witch did. The cultist iconography was way creepy and the strained camradari between the main characters really underpinned it.



If Lovecraft had written this then the cultists would have interbreeded with demon-deers and created the muntjac.



Honestly I find Lovecraft terribly wooden. It's that painstaking, deliberately-carved kind of wooden that is really darn charming in its oddity but I don't really enjoy Uncle Creepy's prose.



Honestly, maybe the most anti-Lovecraft thing in this movie is that the main character actually survives in the end and manages to destroy the cult.



In the movie they say that it's an child of Loki -- the trickster-god who sired many abhorrent monsters. There is nothing in the norse myths that describes a creature like this one though.



Doesn't seem that weird to me. The minds of gods are evil and capricious. It is a creature that has ruled an entire community through fear for over a thousand years. Fear is the manner in which it cows human beings and compels them to venerate it. It seems fitting to me that it would crave subjecting human beings and make them worship it.

Keep in mind, this creature shows them visions of fear. It specifically assults their mind with ghastly hallucinations. It doesn't just want to kill them -- it could do that easily -- it wants to break them, hence all the psychological bombardments. It could chose to just skip the mind-fucked but doesn't. Why? Because it loves it.

And the blonde lady -- shit she failed bro.



I can't think of any event or creature within Norse lore that would correspond with a description like that.



Yeah me too.

A lot of horror is just about doing something startling and unexpected. That idol was creepy and unsettling to begin with. Waking up and finding your naked mate kowtowing in front of it is just one of those sensations that you have no word for.

Lovecraft's "woodeness" if you want to put it that way, is really just his style, and it may have been a symptom of the time period. One thing that is undeniable is his influence on modern horror. Stephen King said this of Lovecraft.

“Now that time has given us some perspective on his work,” says Stephen King, “I think it is beyond doubt that H. P. Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the twentieth century’s greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale.”

Around 1960 a young Stephen King came across an old paperback edition of Lovecraft’s The Lurking Fear and Other Stories . It was a decisive moment for today’s pre-eminent horror writer. “Lovecraft. . . opened the way for me,” writes King, “as he had done for others before me.... it is his shadow, so long and gaunt, and his eyes, so dark and puritanical, which overlie almost all of the important horror fiction that has come since.”

In fact, Clive Barker, Dean Koontz and virtually every other modern horror writer bows to H.P. Lovecraft. I understand Lovecraft is not for everyone, he can be difficult to read but his influence on modern horror is found everywhere. His death was a horror in itself. He died in poverty, never recognized during his lifetime for his contribution and is now considered one of the most influential horror writers of all time. He died a painful death of stomach cancer or something like that and was only 46 years old.

And yea, he was Uncle Creepy, some of these quotes illustrate his inability to be comfortable.

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear. And the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." — Lovecraft on horror.

"As human beings, our only sensible scale of values is one based on lessening the agony of existence." — Lovecraft on life

"If we were sensible we would seek death -- the same blissful blank which we enjoyed before we existed." — Lovecraft on death.

"In short, the world abounds with simple delusions which we may call 'happiness,' if we be but able to entertain them." — Lovecraft on "happiness"

 

[Andersons Foot]

I though it was just okay. The last few minutes were the high point for me, which is good. Closed on a decent note. I usually love when the audience only gets a little bit to work with, and we fill the rest out with our imagination, but there was just so little to go off of until the end, that I found it to be kind of boring. I certainly wasn't scared. The scariest part for me was when the last guy was looking for the naggy friend and the flashlight pans over to him hiding behind a tree.

I got a good laugh out of the last guy punching that old lady in the shack toward the end. Plus once we actually fully saw the monster, I thought it looked pretty awesome. Just couldn't really get into it until the monster showed up, then it was over. Not terrible, but it's not something I'll revisit.

 

[Andersons Foot]

Sometimes I write down little ideas that I tell myself I'll eventually turn into a script, and I had a similar thought to this movie recently. I've only thought briefly about it, so it's just a short film in my head. But I'll release this for the SMC.

A guy is struggling with his homelife, relationship falling apart, terrible job, etc. He starts to question his purpose, spirituality and all that. Basically has an existential crisis. So he decides to go hiking deep into the woods to get away from everything and recharge, "find himself". He ends up in a part of the woods that's only inhabited by occultists (not sure if that's the correct word).

There are a ton of them that all look the same, they'd all be wearing the same outfit, like the kkk. But you'd only see one at a time so you think there's only one total. You'd see them periodically scoping him out, he'd come across some of their stuff like in The Ritual, just things to build up to the end. Eventually he ends up on this long straight path, comes across something like this at the end of it;

Which is where they sacrifice people to the god that they believe in. The guy comes across the leader, who would be wearing something slightly different to the others so you know he's the leader, leader kills the guy and stands over him looking out to the empty path. This starts playing;



Then the camera reverses back to the path, as it's reversing the rest of the occultists(?) emerge from the woods and onto the path, like 30 of them, walking toward their leader, ready to begin the sacrifice.

He wasn't sure if he believed in god anymore, but he ended up being a sacrifice to one!

 

[the muntjac]

New Enemy List:
the muntjac
Tufts
Cubo de Sangre

We're watching unreality here, people. Some times you have to act like you're watching theater and go along with the yarn they are spinning for you.

This is a slippery slope argument for me because once you start applying this mindset to a particular movie, then you either have to stay consistent with that when watching other movies, or just contradict yourself. We all dislike certain movies, or aspects about certain movies for one reason or another.

Being that your name is the muntjac I expected you to write an entire paragraph about rooting for the humongous deer-demon.

Well...

I did add a photo.

Honestly my first reaction upon seeing it was thinking "wow that looks like something straight out of Parasite Eve 2"

I immediately thought of a drawing from those Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark books from the 90s.

If Lovecraft had written this then the cultists would have interbreeded with demon-deers and created the muntjac.

Doesn't seem that weird to me. The minds of gods are evil and capricious. It is a creature that has ruled an entire community through fear for over a thousand years. Fear is the manner in which it cows human beings and compels them to venerate it. It seems fitting to me that it would crave subjecting human beings and make them worship it.

Keep in mind, this creature shows them visions of fear. It specifically assults their mind with ghastly hallucinations. It doesn't just want to kill them -- it could do that easily -- it wants to break them, hence all the psychological bombardments. It could chose to just skip the mind-fucked but doesn't. Why? Because it loves it.

And the blonde lady -- shit she failed bro.

Hmm, I like this interpretation. Although, the creature only seems to choose a select few to impose his will unto, so I can understand why it gets its kicks killing off a few wandering hikers, but for the ones it selects, a strict rule is to bow immediately and not look at it. If not followed, it’s punishable by death. I’d say burning up its work, and then shooting it crosses that boundary.

 

[the muntjac]

In fact, Clive Barker, Dean Koontz and virtually every other modern horror writer bows to H.P. Lovecraft. I understand Lovecraft is not for everyone, he can be difficult to read but his influence on modern horror is found everywhere. His death was a horror in itself. He died in poverty, never recognized during his lifetime for his contribution and is now considered one of the most influential horror writers of all time. He died a painful death of stomach cancer or something like that and was only 46 years old.

Stuff like this bums me out because ya know artists/authors want to feel appreciation for their work, and it’s one of those beautifully tragic things where his work is now considerably appreciated, but he never got to bask in that. Yet some schmuck like Tommy Wiseau makes a shit movie, and people love it (for the wrong reasons, of course) and he’s made a profit off of it.

...sigh...

 

[the muntjac]

Sometimes I write down little ideas that I tell myself I'll eventually turn into a script, and I had a similar thought to this movie recently. I've only thought briefly about it, so it's just a short film in my head. But I'll release this for the SMC.

A guy is struggling with his homelife, relationship falling apart, terrible job, etc. He starts to question his purpose, spirituality and all that. Basically has an existential crisis. So he decides to go hiking deep into the woods to get away from everything and recharge, "find himself". He ends up in a part of the woods that's only inhabited by occultists (not sure if that's the correct word).

There are a ton of them that all look the same, they'd all be wearing the same outfit, like the kkk. But you'd only see one at a time so you think there's only one total. You'd see them periodically scoping him out, he'd come across some of their stuff like in The Ritual, just things to build up to the end. Eventually he ends up on this long straight path, comes across something like this at the end of it;

Which is where they sacrifice people to the god that they believe in. The guy comes across the leader, who would be wearing something slightly different to the others so you know he's the leader, leader kills the guy and stands over him looking out to the empty path. This starts playing;



Then the camera reverses back to the path, as it's reversing the rest of the occultists(?) emerge from the woods and onto the path, like 30 of them, walking toward their leader, ready to begin the sacrifice.

He wasn't sure if he believed in god anymore, but he ended up being a sacrifice to one!

*In my best grindhouse movie trailer voice*

“He went to meet his maker. Instead he met theirs.”

Actually, this is a pretty neat idea. Have you ever considered fully fleshing it out into a script?

 

[Andersons Foot]

*In my best grindhouse movie trailer voice*

“He went to meet his maker. Instead he met theirs.”

Actually, this is a pretty neat idea. Have you ever considered fully fleshing it out into a script?

I’ve given it some thought. Along with a couple other outlines I’ve jotted down. I just struggle with finding the confidence.