‘Ritual’ Proves That Sometimes Silence is Golden (Review)

Written by: Tracy Crockett Directed by: Joko Anwar Cast: Rio Dewanto, Hannah Al Rashid, Izzi Isman I'm online one night messing around on Netflix and I'm trying to find a good foreign movie that I haven’t seen yet and I ran across this messed up movie from Indonesia called Ritual. I'll try and explain what I saw to the best of my ability. Even I had a fairly difficult time following this movie at first but then it all makes sense in the end. Play along will you and follow me down this rabbit hole.

For the first 30 minutes or so there is minimal dialogue – merely a man who wakes up in a shallow grave with no recollection of who he is or where he’s at. As he enters the cabin he finds a video recorder and plays it. He sees images of someone killing his wife as they tape it. It would seem that this dude went there on a vacation with his family and his kids are missing.

He goes and hides in the darkness outside in the woods and begins to search for his children who are also hiding in the darkness. And of course they all decide to begin frantically running around in the darkness in search of each other. This sounds to me like it could turn out disastrous real quick. Why would you run from someone in the dark woods if you couldn’t see? And just as I figured, they encounter one another with bad, bad results.

As the story unfolds he stumbles upon a man buried in some dirt with the sayings “go back to the beginning” carved into his chest. He goes back to the cabin and finds a box with two needles in it with instructions. Ritual was without a doubt the most refreshing movie I’ve watched in quite some time. I had no idea the ending was coming like it did. That completely threw me off guard.

It just goes to show that sometimes silence can be golden. It totally sets this movie up to be one hell of a find. I would suggest this to anyone in the mood for some good old fashioned trippy scares that actually make some sense. Those that take you away to a place in your mind seldom visited.

Rating: 5/5