Horror Scribes Reviews Adam Nevill’s The Ritual has recently been adapted into a movie. Here’s how we think it fares compared to its creepy beginnings. The Ritual (2017) If you go down to the woods today…make sure you’ve read Adam Nevill’s creepy, dread-filled horror novel first (or watched the movie). And insist on NOT taking that short-cut, no matter how much your mate whinges on about his meniscus. Seriously. Leave him. Friends are replaceable. Guts, however, not so much. The movie closely follows the main plot of the book, other than a few key differences: the motivation behind the trip and the detail of some of the events. Similarly to the book, the film is clearly split into two halves. Getting lost then getting found. And it’s in the second half that the changes from the original story are obvious. As true with any horror, the moment we ‘see’ the horrific perp, is the moment it loses its impact. Princess Mononoke’s Forest Spirit, albeit with additional and intriguingly placed limbs, sprang to mind for me. See for yourself and see if you agree. But even so, The Ritual is still one of the most unsettling, original (in spite of the subject matter), gripping, at times trippy, horrors you’ll see this year. And for once it left me wishing I hadn’t read the book first. 8.5/10
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