The Rit­u­al review – fails to scare, enter­tain or convert

The release of a new exor­cism movie has become a rather mun­dane rit­u­al, but the lat­est, unimag­i­na­tive­ly named The Rit­u­al, fol­lows in the foot­steps of recent Rus­sell Crowe vehi­cles The Pope’s Exor­cist and The Exor­cism by lur­ing an unlike­ly old­er star to the project. Play­ing the ​“poor soul”, Father Theophilus, assigned the task of per­form­ing an exor­cism on the strick­en Emma (Abi­gail Cowen) is none oth­er than gang­ster extra­or­di­naire: Al Paci­no. Reluc­tant­ly at his side is horror’s recur­rent weirdo Dan Stevens as Father Joseph in his most straight laced genre role yet.

Begin­ning like any fake-real film with the state­ment that the fol­low­ing scenes are based on true events, The Rit­u­al fol­lows the most doc­u­ment­ed exor­cism in Amer­i­can his­to­ry: that of Emma Schmidt, 46 at the time of the alleged pos­ses­sion, in 1928. Even as The Rit­u­al declares its authen­tic­i­ty it tries to blur the lines of fact and fic­tion, main­ly done with hand­held shaky cam­era work that attempts to cre­ate the feel of a doc­u­men­tary but ends up feel­ing more like The Office than Ghost­watch. The use of the crash-zoom is so relent­less that had the cam­era tech­nique man­aged to gain auton­o­my, it might have filed a cease and desist against all involved.

The umpteenth hor­ror film in the last decade to be named The Rit­u­al, David Midell’s film claws at real­ism as des­per­ate­ly as the demon scratch­es at its ves­sel, how­ev­er one gnaw­ing­ly dis­tract­ing fac­tor is the amount of nipped, tucked and filled faces among the clois­ter. Evil may have fall­en over Father Joseph’s con­vent but the Holy Spir­it has blessed all inside with sur­gi­cal pre­ci­sion and pore­less skin. And no mat­ter how often the flock com­ment on how dan­ger­ous­ly dehy­drat­ed Emma is – appear­ing here in her ear­ly 20s – even as her con­di­tion wors­ens, her skin remains incred­i­bly dewy.

The foun­tain (or knife) of youth thank­ful­ly has refrained from touch­ing Al Paci­no, who appears as the scruffy grand­dad­dy of exor­cisms, com­plete with hair that sticks up like he’s just been elec­tro­cut­ed in an episode of Looney Tunes. He is here to dole out wis­dom and to ground Father Joseph, whose waver­ing faith makes him a detri­ment to the cause. But an astound­ing­ly incon­sis­tent script breaks any trust audi­ences may have in Theophilus, espe­cial­ly when he insists that the priests and nuns involved must hold their resolve on the final eve of exor­cism and ​“not let up” – only for every­one to inex­plic­a­bly leave the pos­sessed girl at the same time, pre­sum­ably for a cof­fee break.

All of which would have been excus­able if Midell had direct­ed an exor­cist film more akin to The Pope’s Exor­cist, where Rus­sell Crowe jaun­ti­ly zips out from the Vat­i­can on a bright red Ves­pa, rather than what is clear­ly intend­ed as a sin­cere drama­ti­sa­tion of a real exor­cism. With its insis­tence on truth even as it strays from the his­tor­i­cal accounts it hinges on, The Rit­u­al fails to scare, enter­tain or con­vert. Even though the sea­soned pro­fes­sion­als attached man­age to hold their own, Paci­no and Stevens can’t save The Rit­u­al from itself.

To keep cel­e­brat­ing the craft of film, we have to rely on the sup­port of our mem­bers. Join Club LWLies today and receive access to a host of benefits.