Sightlines · reception

How The Ritual was received

2017 · David Bruckner · The Ritual on Sightlines

The arc

It slipped out quietly — a UK theatrical run, then a Netflix drop in the US in early 2018 — and has steadily climbed via word-of-mouth ever since, a fixture of every 'best horror actually on Netflix' list and a key beneficiary of the late-2010s folk-horror wave.

What’s debated

The perennial fight is the third act: is the shift away from pure lost-in-the-woods dread a letdown, or does the payoff more than earn it? (With a strong side-debate that this is the rare horror film that got *better* by fully showing its monster.)

Its footprint

The creature Moder is the film's afterlife — endlessly screenshotted and routinely nominated as the best monster design of the 2010s — and 'four lads on a hiking trip' has become shorthand for a whole subgenre of trip-gone-wrong horror.

Where it stands

A Netflix-era cult favorite and Letterboxd hidden-gem staple — the 'trust me, watch it for the monster' recommendation of modern folk horror, and the film that launched Bruckner toward The Night House and Hellraiser.

Did you know? It premiered at TIFF's Midnight Madness in 2017, after which Netflix scooped up rights outside the UK and Ireland — which is why Americans know it as 'that Netflix hiking horror movie' even though it was a proper theatrical release in Britain; it's adapted from Adam Nevill's 2011 novel.