Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch The Ritual
2017 · David Bruckner · The Ritual on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch the camera lose the horizon among the trees. (camera)
Shulkind frames the men as small figures dwarfed by tall conifers that crowd out the sky, repeatedly denying any clear sense of direction.
Payoff: You share the characters' disorientation because the frame itself refuses to give you a horizon to hold onto.
Listen for a groan or cracking branch before anything appears. (sound)
Lovett's score works in low drones and swells, and the forest is built as an acoustic space of distant, unresolved cries that precede any visible threat.
Payoff: Your ears get the warning well before your eyes do, and the film trusts that gap to do the scaring.
Watch for effigies made of branches and antlers in the forest. (setting)
Runic markings carved into bark and a decapitated animal strung as a totem accumulate as evidence of an old, organized worship the men keep stumbling into.
Payoff: Each object is a clue and a warning at once, and the film lets you piece together the danger before anyone explains it.
Notice a flashback interrupt the present without warning. (cutting)
The film returns in fragments to a memory from before the trip, cutting in without warning.
Payoff: The broken-up memory tells you a wound is driving this man before the film explains it.
Watch Luke's irritability curdle into something quieter. (performance)
Spall plays Luke as an ordinary irritable everyman who grows quieter and more inward as the trip wears on and the group frays.
Payoff: The shift in his manner tells you he is carrying something heavier than exhaustion.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch Luke's body when the pressure rises. Notice how much he gives away without speaking.