The Indonesian horror chiller is dark, bloody and full of mystery from start to finish.
Indonesian horror flick Ritual has all the ingredients of a cult chiller: it’s pure edge-of-your-seat suspense, its gory, it’s unrelenting - the complete horror package? Almost. Writer/director Joko Anwar depicts a dark and tropical hellish wilderness that amnesiac John Evans, played by Rio Dewanto, has to claw his way out of. Anwar, a well-known director in Indonesia, came to prominence with his first film, the comedy Arisan, which was unbelievably the first gay-themed film in Indonesia.
Ritual begins with a bewildered John digging himself out of his own shallow grave, only to spend the next hour wondering aimlessly through the humid jungle, discovering corpses, booby-traps and faceless machete-wielding hunters. This opening sequence is certainly well-handled by Anwar, as the audience is left just as confused and shocked as John himself; at times it feels as if we are engaged in a nightmarish first-person video game. And Dewanto is certainly impressive as John, conveying his Kafka-meets-Saw waking nightmare with a raw physicality and very little dialogue. Although, a word of caution here: try to get your hands on a subtitled copy of Ritual as the dubbed version adds unintentional humour, with un-emotive and cartoonish American twangs.
If you were worried that you might be signing up for a two hour art film about trauma and confusion in the jungle, don’t worry, shocking scenes of a pregnant mother being stabbed, the slashing of children’s throats and heads bashed into mush by branches are enough to keep an avid horror fan immersed, and Anwar manages to keeps his gore fresh with pleasingly clever camera angles, intrusive close-ups during death and a whole host of anguish-increasing cuts and fades.
[Note: some spoilers ahead.] But Ritual isn’t just a confusing gore-filled jungle chase. The truth announces itself in the the last quarter of the the film, with an M. Night. Shyamalan-esque twist: John’s amnesia is not the only thing wrong with him, not by a long shot. A clever catalogue of clues lead us to an incredibly impressive reversal in which our sweat-soaked victim reveals a dangerous past and a penchant for spending way too much time in the woods. And whilst the twist is admirable and shocking, it also feels like lazy filmmaking; so much moody tension and darkness had been built-up by Anwar that to have it all dissolve and pivot on a plot device seemed like a shameful cop-out. The ending is rather thin; it doesn’t live up to its grubby, bloody and quixotic original promise, but if you like your horror dark, salvation-free and mysterious you should certainly give Ritual a watch.
Ritual is out on DVD on May 16.
