If you ever wondered how The Exorcist might play if it had been filmed by the creative team behind The Office, you can find out in The Ritual, opening in Prague cinemas this weekend after bowing stateside last month. This rote retread of events covered in dozens, perhaps hundreds, of previous exorcism films benefits from the mere presence of Al Pacino in a central role but fails to bring anything new to the genre outside of an unintentionally hilarious filmmaking style that feels like it was cribbed directly from the long-running NBC sitcom.
The comedic presentation of The Ritual should not be undersold. Shaky-cam horror stylings were in vogue after The Blair Witch Project popularized the found footage genre, and hit a peak in this particular genre with the release of 2010’s The Last Exorcism, which told the story of a documentary film crew following an evangelical minister (coincidentally played by Better Call Saul‘s Patrick Fabian, who also features here).
But there’s a certain kind of tact in the way handheld footage was integrated into horror films of the 2000s that, in the best of these movies, heightened the realism and added to the tension. Outside of the handheld camerawork intended to convince us of the amateur nature of the characters behind the camera, the filmmaking never called attention to itself.
The Ritual, meanwhile, is packed not only with over-the-top shaky-cam aesthetics, but also constant whip-pans and sudden zooms that explicitly evoke the faux documentary style utilized in U.S. version of The Office. It’s such a strong correlation that you’ll feel like the only thing missing here is Jim staring down the camera with a knowing grin. But just you wait until the film’s final shot.
Our Jim in The Ritual is Father Joseph Steiger, played by the usually terrific Dan Stevens, who looks completely lost in terms of how to work this material. The film wastes no time in establishing its story, as Bishop Edwards (Fabian) tasks Steiger with hosting an exorcism at his parish, which he reluctantly agrees to while advocating for psychological care. Mother Superior (Patricia Heaton) and Sister Rose (Ashley Greene) share his concern.
The possessed girl—it’s always a girl—is Emma Schmidt (Abigail Cowen), and seasoned exorcist Father Theophilus Riesinger (Pacino) has been recruited to perform the task. Within the first 15 minutes of The Ritual, all the pieces of the puzzle are in place, and the characters gather around to watch Riesinger exorcise the demons while Steiger takes notes—this is a true story, the film keeps telling us, based on the real Steiger’s extensive notes.
If you have ever seen one of these exorcism movies, you’ll know exactly what happens here. Riesinger recites the Lord’s Prayer, splashes some holy water on the girl, demands to know the name of the demon he is addressing. Emma transforms into the usual Linda Blair victim of possession, covered in lesions, writhing and speaking in tongues, with milky white eyes. Instead of pea soup, she vomits a tar-like substance. That’s the only change from the usual playbook.
In The Exorcist, the climactic exorcism happened at, you know, the climax. Here, it occurs in the middle of the first act. What else does the film have in store, you might ask? Well, that was only the first exorcism, helpfully referred to on screen as The First Ritual. The movie simply repeats itself for the rest of its running time, counting up to The Sixth Ritual, and then losing count. There’s at least a couple more rituals. And all the rituals are the same.
Now, if you happen to like endless scenes of cut-rate exorcism rituals, The Ritual has got you covered, but otherwise the script (credited to director David Midell) is dead-on-arrival. Pacino and Cowen give the kind of committed performances that lend the film some camp value, but the rest of the cast may as well be in an SNL skit. Stevens, in particular, has never been less charismatic.
And what we’re left with is the bizarre and distracting—but also fascinating—work behind the camera. That responsibility must lie with cinematographer Adam Biddle, who previously shot the visually arresting Crank and must have tried to do anything he could to elevate this tired material… or shot the film in protest, in the style of a 2000s sitcom.
Despite flashes of unintentional comedy and a wildly mismatched visual style, The Ritual is just another lazy entry in the exorcism subgenre, content to recycle every tired trope without even pretending to innovate. Not scary, not clever, and not even particularly competent, it’s a film so devoid of purpose you might think its soul was exorcised before the cameras even rolled.
