Ritual (2012)
6/10
Troubling but effective effort
19 February 2016
Awakening in the middle of the jungle, a man with no memory to his identity tries to piece together the disturbing events that lead to his condition and finds a far darker and more sinister secret at the root of the actions throughout his trip.

While there's not a whole lot to like here, it does have some pleasing parts to it when it tried, Among the more impressive parts here is the fact that there's an actually suspenseful job here getting to the main set-up, as the wandering through the jungle and stumbling upon the abandoned cabin with the tape of his wife being held hostage and then finding the blood on the floor creates a really strong opening here as well as the later scenes of him being out in the wilderness alone with the sounds of the animals chirping away furthering this nicely. As well, his search through another cabin later on while trying to stay out-of-sight of a group of attackers outside lends itself to some really creepy moments especially once they light the casket on fire to deter him. The final half, though, where this one runs through an incredibly impressive and truly enjoyable twist ending that takes this on a much darker and far more chilling concept than what had been previously utilized, makes for a really fitting end to this one. Outside of these elements, though, there's not a whole lot worthwhile about this one. The main problem is the fact that far too much time is spent here doing absolutely nothing but simply enhancing the running time focusing on utterly bland and utterly uninteresting passages throughout here with the main parts of the film featuring him just simply wandering around the forest doing absolutely nothing. All we get are panicked shots of him trying to stay out of sight as he tries to piece everything together. There's very little dialog in here as well to help bring things along as the first half plays more like a silent effort without letting anything come out to help this one make more sense with the ability to help let it be known what's going on. With so little information to go on and rather little of interest here in terms of what's happening, this one takes quite a while to get interesting and makes for a challenging watch as it struggles to get it's footing under itself with the way this takes to get to it's good parts and really lowers this one significantly. As well, for as much good as the positives unleashed with it's fine twist does amount to, this one still undoes a lot of good by employing it which really renders far too much of what transpired earlier moot due to not being able to make it gel cohesively with the actions throughout the rest of the film, effectively making it seem more like the finale was written first and then reworked into the rest of film, making it seemingly obvious and sticks out quite readily. Still, this one does have some solid points to it.

Rated R: Graphic Violence, Language and children-in-jeopardy.
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