Between Cuckoo, Abigail, and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, 2024 was a big year for Dan Stevens doing silly voices. So it’s disappointing to see (or rather, hear) that the English actor isn’t doing one of his signature accents in The Ritual – until you remember that, for him, the dialect of the Iowan setting is exotic. Still, Stevens tamps down his natural hamminess for this serious-minded exorcism movie, which despite its supernatural subject matter, should be classified as a horror-drama rather than as a straight-up horror picture.
The Ritual presents itself as a historical document, opening with onscreen text touting its real-life inspiration, the alleged demonic possession of Emma Schmidt (a.k.a. Anna Ecklund), as the “most thoroughly documented case of demonic possession in American history.” That’s not to say that co-writer and director David Midell lacks showmanship: The intro quickly cuts to Stevens’ character, Father Joseph Steiger, fleeing the scene during an especially dramatic part of Anna’s exorcism. Very expected jump scares aside, the plot unfolds in the matter-of-fact style of an official report, with sober performances, slightly formal dialogue, and a modest, well-scrubbed approximation of an early-20th-century Franciscan convent.
Middell leaves room for doubt whether Emma (played here by Abigail Cowen) is actually suffering from possession or mental illness. There’s potential here to turn Emma’s story into a critique of the Catholic Church, or to question the role faith itself played in her months-long ordeal. But the bishop (Patrick Fabian) who comes to visit Steiger at the beginning of the film has done his due diligence. The Capuchin monk charged with actually performing the ceremony, Theophilus Riesinger (Al Pacino), approaches his work with compassion. Everyone has good intentions, shifting blame from the church and onto more nebulous – and therefore blameless – forces.
One of these is the Devil and his minions — although it’s more agnostic than most, The Ritual is ultimately respectful of Catholic dogma. (For a more radical recent take on the theme, see 2023’s Godless: The Eastfield Exorcism.) It’s difficult to say whether realistic scenes of Emma seizing and foaming at the mouth are more disturbing if they’re motivated by earnest, but incorrect belief or by actual demonic forces; the movie trades on this discomfort, but ultimately loses impact by refusing to choose a side.
One aspect that brings The Ritual out of the 1920s and into the 2020s is its focus on the women who live at the convent, a feminist angle that feels organic and unforced. Emma herself is a tortured, victimized blank, but Sister Rose (Ashley Greene), who assists in the exorcisms, and the convent’s Mother Superior (Patricia Heaton) experience the same doubts and dangers as their male counterparts – more, in Sister Rose’s case, after she’s violently attacked during one of the rituals. Greene and Heaton give surprisingly good performances, and their roles are an interesting departure from the machismo of the subgenre’s hero priests.
Pacino is a minor character by comparison, and relatively subdued – although he and his brother in overacting Stevens do get to climb the walls a little in the more intense exorcism scenes. (Metaphorically, of course. The actual wall-climbing is saved for the possessed girl.) Riesinger and Steiger’s dynamic is similar to that of Fathers Merrin and Karras in The Exorcist, and that’s not a coincidence: The Ecklund case was one of several that formed the basis for William Peter Blatty’s bestselling novel and its William Friedkin-directed film adaptation. But this is a liability as much as an asset. The parts of the story that made it into The Exorcist have become tropes through repetition, which lends a certain mustiness to The Ritual’s possession scenes.
Steiger’s torment – in which the demon mocks him by telling him that his brother, who died by suicide, is burning in hell – also feels like a rehash. His role in the exorcism is to observe and document, and his role in the story is to be troubled enough by Emma’s treatment to debate it right up until the harrowing finale. That’s where The Ritual’s confinement to a handful of neat, claustrophobic rooms finally pays off: Using tight framing and shaky handheld camerawork, Midell ratchets the mood to a state of frenzied panic.
Unfortunately, this follows 90 less effective minutes of that very same style of framing and camerawork, which – especially in the dialogue scenes – comes off more like The Office than The Exorcist. Pushing in and out on a character’s face as they talk can’t help but evoke a pithy Jim Halpert one-liner at this point, and it undermines the gravity of The Ritual every time it happens. The shaky cam also makes it difficult to follow what’s going on in the exorcism scenes, which discourages engagement from the audience as much as it encourages terror.
The combination of self-serious storytelling and deeply unserious filmmaking choices proves fatal, as the jumble of influences and intentions fails to produce either a clear artistic thesis or significant entertainment value. With these obstacles, even the presence of major stars like Pacino and Stevens can’t prevent The Ritual from being a promising concept compromised by flawed directorial decisions. It’s a tragic tale of human fallibility – on multiple levels.
