‘The Ritual' Review: Al Pacino Performs an Exorcism in a Horror Effort Possessed by Mediocrity

Yahoo

2 days ago

If Hollywood is to be believed, life as a Catholic priest at the turn of the 20th century involved spending 75 percent of your time sitting in your office while people brought troubled women to you and asked you to determine if all of their problems could be explained away by demonic possession. So begins 'The Ritual,' David Middel's excruciatingly generic horror effort that forces us to wonder whether the exorcism subgenre has any interesting juice left squeezing out of it — and then offers little in terms of reassurance on that front.
When Emma Schmidt (Abigail Cowen) begins experiencing night terrors, crippling fears of holy objects, and other signs of extreme distress, the clergymen in Earling, Iowa have differing opinions about how to treat her afflictions. Father Joseph Steiger (Dan Stevens), the young priest in charge of the local parish, is inclined to take a modern approach. Informed on the latest scientific developments, he sees a woman who needs psychiatric help, not evidence that Satan himself has infiltrated a human soul and needs to be exorcised. But the elderly (and eccentric) Father Theophilus Riesinger (Al Pacino) has other ideas. A lifelong believer in the ritual of exorcism, Theophilus won't be fooled by any of that newfangled science. He's determined to rely on old world methods to expunge the demonic presence from Emma, and the local bishop (Patrick Fabian), overrules Joseph and insists that they use his church to do it.
More from IndieWire
'Stick' Review: Owen Wilson's Golf Comedy Takes Too Many Shortcuts Trying to Be 'Ted Lasso'
'John Candy: I Like Me' Documentary to Open 2025 Toronto International Film Festival
What follows is so redundant that it barely merits a summary. Per usual, the old and new world methods clash over topics like whether to physically restrain Emma to a bed, and Theophilus is convinced that anything that looks like rational evidence against his ideas is just Satan manipulating everyone's brain. Despite all of that, Joseph gradually realizes that his nutty companion is correct about Satan being in the room with us. (Just once, I'd like to see one of these movies where the rational priest is vindicated after the crackpot's tactics completely fail and leave the church in a shambles.) While the film occasionally makes an attempt at a jump scare, it doesn't offer nearly enough spectacle to justify its strict adherence to plot beats we've seen so many times before.
A certain breed of cinephile might read this and think that the prospect of current Al Pacino playing a borderline senile exorcist with a thick German accent in a cheap B-movie is enough to guarantee a campy good time, narrative flaws be damned. But the final nail in the coffin of the film's watchability is how much effort the octogenarian star actually puts into the role. He plays the character perfectly straight, ensuring that there's no memeably bad outburst or low effort moment in a film that really could have used one.
The film's greatest sin is how utterly boring it is, from its straightforward Catholic rituals that give way to predictable scares to the shaky handheld camerawork that doesn't fit with a movie that never makes any attempt to brand itself as found footage. And it appears that its filmmakers (or at least its marketing team) hope to rectify that by branding it as the one 'real' exorcism movie. 'The Ritual' leans into its status as a 'true story' of one of the most documented exorcisms in American history, using title cards to note that Father Theophilus Riesinger was eventually profiled in Time Magazine and that the events influenced other movies like 'The Exorcist.'
It's a flimsy platform to stake an entire movie's existence on, as the claim is impossible to prove, and those who want to believe it will say it's impossible to disprove. We know that Emma Schmidt was a real woman who had an exorcism performed on her by these two men, but we don't have any way of knowing that there was an actual demon inside of her. For a film that treats historical realism as a primary selling point, 'The Ritual' has no real grounds on which to assert that it's less fantastical than any of the better exorcism movies out there.
An XYZ release, 'The Ritual' opens in theaters nationwide on Friday, June 6.
Want to stay up to date on IndieWire's film and critical thoughts? to our newly launched newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings — all only available to subscribers.
Best of IndieWire
The 25 Best Alfred Hitchcock Movies, Ranked
Every IndieWire TV Review from 2020, Ranked by Grade from Best to Worst