The Ritual wasn’t flawless but it was the first horror movie I’ve seen in a while that 1) wasn’t utterly predictable 2) had me actually hoping the characters would make it out 3) the monster design didn’t fall apart the longer it was on screen
Which characters were you hoping would survive? I didnt really care for any of them…
it wasn’t that I really liked them so much as they were just a little different than the usual fare for horror movies, I chew through pretty much every even mildly horror movie that comes out so I end up seeing a lot of schlock with either dumb handsome macho guys or Oh This Guy Smokes Weed guys so it was just refreshing to visually see 4 guys that just look and kind of act like random guys rather than big stupid horror movie idiots, it gave you an impression of like… even if I disliked them I felt like they were human characters who people would miss. or something
That’s a good point! I was intrigued by the choice of an all male cast because it didn’t lean on female suffering the way most horror movies do. But I also feel like a lot of the stuff they were doing, like some of the dudes being really into drinking and having a “lads holiday” and trashing the nerd man about having a torn meniscus (which is incredibly painful???) made it seemed like they were setting up some kind of statement about classic macho masculinity, but then it ended up making no statement at all. Just like it seemed like the main character was going to confront his guilt and either redeem himself by fighting the monster to save his friend or realizing that it is ok to just save himself and practicing macho violence is not necessary to be a good man but in the end he does neither…