Anyone else feel like the exorcism movie could use an exorcism of its own? I only say this because I’m long past the point now where I feel I have to say something to anyone wishing to make a movie based around the infamous, religious act: if you haven’t got an original idea, please don’t bother. While religious horror can sometimes scratch that itch other subgenres fail to reach, aside from the odd interesting wrinkle (the sight of an Italian Russell Crowe on a Vesper, for example), as a whole, movies featuring the ritualistic expelling of demons haven’t really changed their basic shtick since William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, which still remains the mac daddy of them all
However, there’s a new player in town. With a heavyweight cast that features Al Pacino and Dan Stevens, can David Midell’s The Ritual manage to do something different with a genre that’s been drowning in the exact same tropes since the 70s?
Good God, no.
The year is 1928 and Father Joseph Steiger has just received some startling orders from his immediate superior (no, not God – think a little lower). After being handed the disturbing case history of an Emma Schmidt that details the harrowing, journey she’s gone through, Steiger finds that after exhaustive psychological tests and exams have come to naught, the church have decreed that the young woman is due for an exorcism. Initially shocked that the church would push for such a seemingly outdated practice, Steiger is unsure why any of this pertains to him when his bosses hit him with the ungodly punchline – the ritual is to be held at his parish and he is to sit in and take notes.
As he reels from this order, matters swing into action fairly fast and soon the miserable looking Emma is delivered looking tired and dehydrated. However, when the elderly Father Theophilus Riesinger shows up to do the actual ritual, the beliefs of both he and Steiger immediately start to jostle uncomfortably against one another. While the older priest insists that Emma should be restrained for everyone’s safety, the younger feels that’s overkill and thus unnecessary – and so the first of many rituals begins that sees Theophilus perform the exorcism, Steiger take exhaustive notes and a trio of nuns trying to assist, but it soon becomes apparent that the older priest has been deep in the ecumenical shit before and as the nights progress, Emma’s condition gets even more extreme.
Soon, the toll the nightly exorcisms take on the people involve start getting serious and the multiple injuries the nuns are having to weather such as a crushed hand and a torn scalp means that if they don’t all pull together and get on the same religious page, the ritual will be shut down, Emma’s soul will be lost and redemption for everyone involved will be nothing more than a distant pipe dream.
So once again I find myself having to grind my way through yet another exorcism movie that stupidly assumes that we haven’t already watched the greatest exorcism ever made. As a result, we all get to sit in a cinema for 98 minutes getting flagellated across the back and shoulders by a severe case of deja vu. It’s literally all here: bed restraints, self mutilation, green puke, doubting young priests, wise old priests, different creepy voices, literally the fucking works and I have to be honest with you, I’m getting plenty sick and tired with the whole genre at this point. I mean, at least slashers, vampire flicks, zombie movies and others have the self awareness to reinvent themselves and try and take fresh new approaches to the material to keep things feeling unpredictable and vital. However, exorcism movies have been stuck in the same rut for over forty years and the The Ritual is frustratingly no exception. Christ, even the title has been overused to death and despite the earnest actions of everyone in front of the camera, the whole ordeal ends up being utterly pointless.
I’m genuinely not sure what director David Midell was trying to achieve by taking on the story of America’s most documented case of “actual” exorcism by making it look exactly like every other demonic possession story ever made, but the fact the story was last full adapted in 2016’s The Exorcism Of Anna Ecklund somehow just makes things worse. In fact, I’m still scratching my head as to why the likes of Al Pacino and Dan Stevens signed on in the first place. Maybe the former wanted to keep busy and the later wanted a more conservative job after playing a ganger vampire and King Kong’s dentist in 2024, but while they’re predictably solid, neither bring anything new to their time weathered roles. Anyone hoping for Pacino to pull out any of that old-school fire from Heat or The Devil’s Advocate and bellow the demon out of the girl is going to sorely disappointed as he’s firmly locked in little old man mode. Conversely, Stevens does his uptight thing, but the movie’s one good idea of having the nightly rituals take their toll on the sanity and physical health of those present doesn’t go much further than the occasional random jump scare and having Dan Stevens yell “I can’t take it anyone” with dark rings under his eyes.
Similarly, the growing injury list accumulated by the luckless nuns assigned to help (which includes Twilight’s Ashley Greene) is also an interesting touch – but an outburst from Patricia Heaton’s Mother Superior about the way women are treated by the church maybe suggests that a more original approach may have come from focusing on the clutch of sisters instead as they do all the “grunt” work and rack up some gnarly injuries for their troubles.
The final indignity for the film is that Midell seems to think that deploying a extraordinarily unsteady handheld style to film the action isn’t going to immediately make people think of comedy shows like The Office or Modern Family and rather than make everything feel more real and immediate, the climax gets so shakey, you wonder if it wasn’t the camera operator who needed a exorcism. However, while her role is as about as undernourished as her beleaguered character, props have to be given to Abigail Cowen who has to go through the whole standard Linda Blair shit like a trouper. As both Blair and Jennifer Carpenter will tell you from bitter experience, playing a possessed girl is a thankless, glamour-free task, but Cowen gurns, drools, contorts and growls with the best of them as she’s covered in self inflicted wounds. But once again, while her performance is appropriately harrowing, it’s also something you’ve regrettably seen a million times before.
Any mouth watering prospect of watching Pacino try to out-bellow a demon soon dries up when you find that things are going to be far more tired, predictable and way too familiar. Maybe slap another half-star on to The Ritual’s rating if you’ve somehow never seen an exorcism movie before – but if that’s truly the case, why the fuck would you possibly want to start here?
Curse you, unoriginal possession movies, may the devil take you.
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