There is absolutely nothing interesting about this movie. There is the setup and then everything after that is just the same old same old growling voice theatrics of every other exorcism movie since the exorcism movie to start the whole exorcism movie craze, William Peter Blatty and William Friedkin's The Exorcist.
Now, this movie on the other hand was run through a highly technical process called "tension extraction" to remove any trace of dramatic variance. It's just dull. All the characters are one dimensional.
The plot is threadbare if not simply cut and paste. No, truly.
Someone pitched it this way: "Think The Exorcist but involving a young woman being helped by an old priest with an accent and a young priest with doubts." And someone else said, "So.....The Exorcist." And the first person said, "No one remembers that. We'll throw in the mom from Everybody Loves Raymond. They'll remember her. And we'll call it The Ritual." And the second person says, "But there was a really good folk horror movie just a few years ago called that." And the first person says "Perfect. People will have forgotten what that was about and think this is the latest quick reboot and hand over their money like the dolts they are. Get me the oldest actor on the planet to play the one priest. Is the guy from Cruising still alive?"
And within the next four minutes a script was finished by a malfunctioning AI, Pacino's agent told the studio where to park the truckload of money, and the film wrapped production so fast Roger Corman's corpse tripped a California seismograph rolling so hard over in his grave.
This piece of garbage movie is everything that is wrong with everything in the world. There is no thought put into anything anymore. It is all about rushing out rehashed tripe to take cash from the masses.
