The Ritual: The Devil’s in the Details, But Not Much Else

By Thom Ernst

Rating: C

The Ritual wastes no time declaring itself as true. That hallowed claim, “based on a true story,” appears across the screen in the most unassuming of fonts, as if modesty somehow enhances credibility.

It’s a devilishly sly move, more cunning than anything the film itself manages to conjure. From that moment forward, truth is treated less like a foundation and more like a vague acquaintance.

We cut to a priest, face tightened into solemn dread, and it's clear: The Ritual wants you to know this is serious drama. If the grim lighting and sober close-ups haven’t tipped you off, don’t worry—they’ll keep trying.

The film is saturated with long, intense conversations and weighty stares, all in service of a grave atmosphere. Every performance is tuned to a note of brooding earnestness. Only Al Pacino, as the visiting exorcist Father Theophilus Riesinger, appears untouched by the gloom.

Disheveled and unexpectedly restrained, Pacino gives the kind of performance that feels like he wandered onto set between naps and still managed to be the most interesting presence onscreen.

Director David Midell aims for something lofty: a film that is both a credible exploration of Catholic exorcism practices and a philosophical meditation on the eternal clash between good and evil. What he achieves is neither. Any potential for probing the friction between theology and science is promptly sacrificed—one assumes for the sake of something profound and entertaining.

Oh, if only.

Instead, The Ritual settles into well-worn genre habits, rehashing familiar devil tricks without adding anything new. In choosing to emphasize an "unsubstantiated truth" over a compelling story or fresh insight, Midell blurs the line between history and horror with all the grace of a magician fumbling through a card trick he learned that morning.

The film is based on what’s considered the most documented case of demonic possession on record. That much is true. But “documented” does not mean “proven,” a detail Midell speeds past like a child rushing through chores.

The characters keep their real-life names: Father Steiger, Father Riesinger, and Emma Schmidt (Abigail Cowen), and the setting remains 1928—an era, it would seem, where demons enjoyed a freer access to souls, unbothered by today’s distractions.

Dan Stevens, who once exuded upper-crust nobility in Downton Abbey and sheer menace in The Guest, plays Father Steiger, the too-hot-for-celibacy priest whose charm and progressive leanings resonate fondly with the nuns. His chemistry with Sister Rose (Ashley Greene) is noted, if only so that the demon can later weaponize it when whispering everyone’s repressed fantasies back at them.

Steiger, spiralling down a perquisite crisis of faith common to clergy in movies, is nonetheless pressured by the bishop (Patrick Fabian) into taking Emma in, overseeing the exorcism, and documenting the ordeal. Even Mother Superior (Patricia Heaton) gets a modern-sounding line or two about being smarter and holier than the men above her—an anachronism that seems unlikely for the era.

There are brief references to Emma’s traumatic past, her mental health struggles, and signs of abuse but Midell quickly trades these symptoms for a more horror-compatible explanation: demons.

In the end, The Ritual is a film that wants desperately to be taken seriously but has little of substance to offer once you look past the demons check list of possessive essentials; vomiting, levitating, mysterious lesions, gravelly voices spewing out secrets. It’s all there, yet somehow none of it sticks.

For all its proclamations of authenticity, The Ritual feels no more grounded than a message from a Ouija board. And that, perhaps, is the real possession at work here: truth, struggling to be a spectacle.

The Ritual. Directed by David Midell. Starring Dan Stevens, Patricia Heaton, Abigail Cowen, Patrick Fabian, and Ashley Greene. In theatres June 6.