The Red Book Ritual

I'm shocked at how badly this movie is rated. Like most anthologies I've seen, the framing narrative is the weakest part. The individual stories are great looking and genuinely tense. The production value is higher than most low budget horror we watch.

Bea is apparently newish in town and has made a couple of friends who tell her a creepy story about her new house and suggest playing "the red book game". It's a kind of divination game and I'll admit we are totally going to try it because it looks fun. The book directs them to read it, resulting in several short stories that are completely unrelated to each other. Some are stronger than others as you might expect. The framing narrative is a let down but I rarely see an anthology where it isn't.

Side rant, the guy is supposedly 27, looks 40 and shouldn't be hanging out with teenaged girls anyway. I wasn't rooting for him to survive.

We watch a lot of bad horror movies, it's our hobby, so maybe our bar is really low for what makes a decent movie? This one isn't bad by any means and we really liked a couple of the shorts. It's not fast paced, it is aesthetically nice, it had some moments that made us squirm.

It's an Indie film not a big budget production so if you have high expectations you are going to be disappointed.

Overall, it's not a bad collection of stories, some better than others, and equally some of the acting is not going to win any awards.

Even so, it is perfectly watchable with some interesting twist and turns and enough to keep you engaged (with the occasional groan) for the near ninety minutes it is on screen.

It is certainly better than a lot of the American teen cabin in the woods films that have flooded the horror genre in recent years.

So if you happen to see it is available then it is worth watching.

The appealing artwork on this makes it a bit of a letdown. To cut to the chase, this cannot be compared in the same class as some of the good or great anthology offerings. (It's no V/H/S, Creepshow, Tales of Halloween, Tales from the Darkside, Trick R Treat, or Cat's Eye- just to name a few). It's a random collection of amateur-acted horror shorts to walk through if you seek these out (horror film festival grade). That doesn't mean all the content is bad- a couple or few of the shorts are pretty decent, but most of them have no closure (and lack adequate cohesion to be a "short story"). One happens to be dubbed quite poorly over Korean actors (especially the young girl.. oof!). The synth track overlaying the last short caught my attention several times in a good way; it was probably the best entry (imo). Prepare for some daring nudity in the first short. My rating may be generous, but I'm a seeker.

The Red Book Ritual promises an ominous occult game but delivers a grab-bag of shorts glued together with little care. Each segment feels ripped from better films-K-horror possession, desert-highway demon, witch-house clichés-yet none is given the space or logic to land. Performances range from wooden to outright comical, making it impossible to fear for, or even hate, the paper-thin teens at its center. Stylish lighting and a neat synth cue can't paper over cheap effects, sloppy dubbing, and lack of payoff. Even anthology devotees will struggle to stay awake through its cliffhanger endings. Skip the ritual; read a better book instead.

This movie at first reminded me of another with the same premise but way better than this movie. The stories presented in this one weren't related in anyway. Heck they didn't make sense unless I'm missing something. Only story I liked was the nurse one and that's about it. There's some nudity in the first story but nothing "sexy" at all. I feel like I wasted my time watching this movie. I was not impressed with this movie at all. Cheap, no point, ending was terrible. Plus it was just painful to sit through this pathetic attempt at horror. To top it off it was another bad anthology with poor story lines.