Directed By David Midell

Starring – Al Pacino, Dan Stevens, Ashley Greene

The Plot – Based on true events, the film follows two priests, one questioning his faith (Stevens) and one reckoning with a troubled past (Pacino), who must put aside their differences to save a possessed young woman (Abigail Cowen) through a difficult and dangerous series of exorcisms. The film is an authentic portrayal of Emma Schmidt, an American woman whose demonic possession culminated in harrowing exorcisms. Her case remains the most thoroughly documented exorcism in American history.

This film is currently not rated

THE RITUAL 2025 – Official Trailer

POSITIVES

Searching for the needle in the haystack that is this movie’s redeeming factors proves to be a tremendous uphill climb, however there are a couple of sparse aspects that at least attempted to keep me invested, even when the movie surrounding them seems to directly contradict their admirable efforts. The first is definitely Pacino, who disappears seamlessly into the depths of his character, with a thick German accent and greying beard that allows us to see him as a character, instead of the Oscar-winner adorning him. In a variety of critics, you will undoubtedly hear disappointment from the subdued nature of Pacino’s performance, with little in the way of energetic scene-chewing that could at least make the engagement fun, but I found his understatement to add a gravitas and humanity to the character that effortlessly reflects his age, and with an abundance of long-winded diatribes in and out of the movie’s mostly single stage setting, Pacino definitely doesn’t sleep through the role, appraising a big name presence to the proceedings that a movie this inferior appreciates in spades. On top of Pacino’s work, I found the subtleties in make-up schemes within the movie’s production values to appraise a duality to Emma’s possession that effectively renders pain and permanence to the depths of her bodily struggle, despite never losing shape of the humanity from within her that is struggling to remain in tow. While nothing as ghastly or gruesome as some of the best films of the subgenre, the effects here materialize a deteriorating persistence that serves as the movie’s single biggest note of urgency, all the while influencing Cowen’s performance, which definitely could use all of the help that she can get.

NEGATIVES

Whether inadvertently or not, William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist” continues to be the most copied film perhaps in all of cinema, giving way to a generation of inferior possession films like this one that loses sight of the originality and soul that made that film a cultural landmark of its time. To be fair, originality is far from this film’s biggest problem, but the outline of its plot combined with depths of its exploration, does very little to allow it to stand out from an immense shadow that it only further reinforces by how forcefully it borrows from its superior predecessor, with repetition and derivativeness in its structure that easily makes this the single most boring engagement that I have had in a film this year. If the script zeroed in on some compelling characterization, with a thorough exploration of either Stevens’ frail religious outlook, or Pacino’s backstory in his various exploits with evil, then it could’ve added some three-dimensional versatility that unanimously earned our empathy and investment in these characters, but the script feels so confined by its 93-minute run time that it abruptly rushes through these sequences, stopping only to add obviously on-the-nose exposition that only further echoes what we just experienced in the previous scene, crafting a callousness in consistency for its editing scenes that constantly feel like they intrude ever so nonchalantly in the integrity of many scenes that feel like they’re going somewhere, before being transitioned to the next scene mid-sentence. In terms of frights, my previous description of repetition squanders any accidental sentiment of prolonged suspense or building tension, with the script’s structure of these six different rituals, all at different times in the film, brandishing the wash, rinse, repeat format of prayer, conflict and escape that all of these scenes are single-handedly defined by. If this isn’t enough, Midell’s direction is every bit underwhelming as it is frustrating, with strange sequencing in the transpiring of events that jumps from one to eleven in a matter of seconds, without anything in the way of prolonged uncertainty that could drive speculation and intrigue into the scene, and considering Midell attains no semblance of ominous atmosphere to at least preheat the oven, it leaves him settling for ineffective jolts in jump scares that utilize annoyingly abrasive sound designs that are more annoying than alarming, made all the more frustrating by being the biggest hinderance to my increasing drowsiness that could’ve offered me escape from a film that I was having no part of. This sentiment is established quite early on in the engagement, as the production’s presentation utilizes this shaking camera consistency meant to mimic mockumentaries, for absolutely no reason what so ever. During the first couple minutes of the engagement, I noticed abrupt shifts forward with the lens that made this feel like found footage captivity, and while I never received confirmation in this intention from anything that mentions someone following these priests around, despite the story being articulated as being the single most documented exorcism in American history, it persisted as a nagging annoyance that not only compromised the integrity of scenes reaching for horrifying shock imagery, but also articulated this jarring freneticism with the lens during possession sequences that made it especially distracting to remain focused on what we’re supposed to be seeing. The aforementioned panning in on characters each time one of them begins to speak, crafts a disturbing intrusion that pulls the focus of the audience away from exposition needed to further invest in the dynamics of its characters, all the while offering a comfortably complacent means of escape for the movie’s imagery to not get in the way of its non-rating, making it feel like the most kind of watered down horror that somehow received a wide release to its marketing, despite offering nothing in the way of shock or awe that could at least disturb a horror hound audience into having a good time. Finally, while I previously commended Pacino’s ability to disappear into a role, despite his familiarity in appearance as a pop culture icon, the same cannot be said for Dan Stevens and Abigail Cowen, who are each never able to make the roles their own, despite ideal casting that should offer no shortage of opportunity for both of them. Stevens is of no fault, as the script rarely gives him an opportunity to showcase dramatic range or internalized speculation, instead only summoning the evidential frustration of being left to remain dormant, but Cowen’s physicality or aura leaves plenty more to be desired within her unconvincing demeanor, and while her character essentially has all of the supernatural power and capability at her disposal, Cowen lacks the imposing stature and spine-tingling psychology that should take the performance to a whole other level, resulting in a complete lack of menace that honestly made me forget that she was even there in scenes that quite literally surround her.

OVERALL
“The Ritual” proves that ongoing copies of a compelling original often lead to inferiority among its material and overall execution, but there’s such a lack of effort contained in David Midell’s production that can’t even manage to attain dramatic intensity or scattered scares, resulting in 93 minutes of prolonged agony that feels like rock bottom for demonic possession horror efforts. Despite Al Pacino’s best efforts towards a surprisingly subdued performance, there’s absolutely no soul to steal in this generically familiar shell, and the squandered subgenre should be exorcised completely from the ambitions of future filmmakers, as we’ve already experienced the best that the subgenre has to offer

My Grade: 2.4 or F-