Film
The Ritual
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.
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.

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.

More like this (8)
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 Song2016no page yet
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.

Severance2006no page yet
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.
People
Cast
Rafe SpallLuke
Arsher AliPhil
Robert James-CollierHutch
Paul ReidRobert
Matthew NeedhamJunkie
Jacob James BeswickFiend
Maria ErwolterThe Host
Hilary ReevesThe Curate
Peter LiddellThe Logger
Francesca MulaThe Witch
Kerri McLeanGayle
Directing
- David BrucknerDirector
- Liam LockFirst Assistant Director
- Andra BarbuicaScript Supervisor
- Delmi ThomasSecond Assistant Director
- Valeriu ChiranThird Assistant Director
Writing
- Adam NevillNovel
- Joe BartonWriter
Production
- Domnica CirciumaruCasting
- Julie HarkinCasting
- Patricia PoienaruCo-Producer
- Phil RobertsonExecutive Producer
- Will TennantExecutive Producer
- Xavier MarchandExecutive Producer
- Patricia PoienaruLine Producer
- Andy SerkisProducer
- Jonathan CavendishProducer
- Richard HolmesProducer
- Ron AmesProducer
- Dana Boghean-MelconianProduction Coordinator
- Elisa ScublaResearcher
- Teo BostanicaUnit Manager
- Mihai BusuiocUnit Production Manager
Recommended by
The Wicker Man, Midsommar, The Descent, Apostle, Kill List, Dog Soldiers