Film

The Ritual

Name: The Ritual
Genre: Horror, Mystery
Released: 2017
Cast: Rafe Spall, Arsher Ali, Robert James-Collier, Sam Troughton, Paul Reid

Horror
Very dark

Four college friends, one still raw with guilt, take a shortcut through the Swedish backcountry and wander into something old and territorial. It's less jump-scare machine than slow-tightening dread, all mossy light and wrong-shaped trees, with a genuinely moving undercurrent about cowardice and male friendship. Good for a quiet, atmosphere-hungry night; the late creature reveal is the part people argue about.

TMDb rating

3.2

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like slow-building dread where the woods feel hostile and the bond between old friends carries as much weight as the scares.

Skip it if you want a relentless scare machine; this one spends long stretches on walking, arguing and silence, with its frights arriving in sparse bursts.

What it asks of you: A lean ninety-four minutes that builds unease slowly through landscape and strained friendship; it rewards full attention in a quiet room.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Midsommar2019

Grief, guilt and a forest that turns hostile in broad, sickly daylight instead of darkness. Ari Aster's cult horror shares The Ritual's DNA of friends who shouldn't have come and can't quite leave.

But It's two and a half hours of escalating dread with almost no relief valve. Some find the ending more disturbing than satisfying.

The Descent2005

Swap forest for cave system, but the same formula: a group carrying old resentments, a wrong turn, and something that shouldn't exist waiting in the dark. Claustrophobic, mean, and genuinely frightening.

But Relentlessly tense with no comic relief, and the practical gore is grimier than The Ritual's more restrained approach.

Kill List2011

British, blokey, and quietly unravelling from mundane menace into something ritualistic and much stranger. Ben Wheatley builds dread the same patient way, then detonates it.

But Starts as a grim hitman drama before the horror kicks in properly, and the tonal whiplash isn't for everyone.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Ritual

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Manchester by the Sea2016

Luke's guilt over failing his friend in the robbery is literally the monster of The Ritual. This film is the same wound with the creature removed — just a man carrying what he did.

Strip out the monster and what's left is The Ritual's actual subject: a man hollowed out by guilt over a death he couldn't prevent, unable to forgive himself or move forward.

But There's no genre scaffolding to hide behind here, just sustained, unglamorous grief. It's a heavy, quiet watch.

The Witch2016

Robert Eggers' debut is folk horror at its most austere: isolation, old gods, a family fraying under pressure they can't name. The dread is slow, textured, and never cheap.

But Archaic dialogue and a glacial pace test patience; this is atmosphere over incident, almost entirely.

Hereditary2018

Grief as the engine of horror, again, but cranked up domestic and unbearable before it goes cosmic. Toni Collette gives one of the great horror performances.

But It's punishing rather than fun, and the family trauma at its centre is genuinely upsetting, not just scary.

Annihilation2018

A group ventures into a warped, altered landscape that's rewriting the rules of nature and them along with it. Same eerie-wilderness dread, filtered through science fiction instead of folklore.

But Cerebral and ambiguous where The Ritual is visceral; some will want more monster, less metaphor.

A Dark Song2016

A tiny, intense two-hander about grief driving someone into genuinely dangerous ritual magic. Slow-burn and deeply serious about the cost of trying to reach the other side.

But Almost entirely dialogue and process for most of its runtime; the payoff is spiritual rather than spectacular.

The Blair Witch Project1999

The original lost-in-the-woods dread, stripped down to shaky camcorder footage and an unseen thing circling the campsite at night. Still unsettling for how little it shows.

But Found-footage shakiness and 90s low-budget rawness will feel primitive next to The Ritual's polish.

Deliverance1972

Four friends, a wilderness trip, and a mistake that follows them home in their heads forever. No supernatural monster, just men discovering what they're capable of and what they can't undo.

But It's a survival thriller about human violence, not horror, and one scene in particular is notoriously brutal.

The Wicker Man1973

The Ritual's forest-god cult is a direct descendant of this film's pagan islanders — trespassers punished not out of malice but old, indifferent ritual logic.

Outsiders wander into a community organised around an old, patient god they don't understand until it's too late. The blueprint for every folk-horror dread-in-the-woods film since, including this one.

But Dated pacing and a very 1970s sensibility, plus its reputation means the ending is hard to go in unspoiled on.

Severance2006

It's the same friend-group-in-the-woods skeleton stripped of grief and dread and rebuilt as farce — proof of how flexible the premise is.

Same setup — office colleagues, remote forest, something hunting them — played almost entirely for gruesome laughs. If The Ritual's dread ever tipped into absurdity, this is what it would look like.

But Broad, splattery British horror-comedy with none of The Ritual's atmosphere or emotional weight; it wants you laughing, not unsettled.