Film Review: "The Ritual" (2017).

"Your darkest dream awaits you" in The Ritual. This British supernatural horror film directed by David Bruckner, adapted by Joe Barton, and based on the 2011 novel of the same name by Adam Nevill. Four friends with a long-standing - but strained - connection take a hiking trip into the Swedish wilderness, from which they may never return.

The film stars Rafe Spall, Arsher Ali, Robert James-Collier, and Sam Troughton. The cast offered powerful enough performances to keep me engaged throughout. The four friends in a vast, isolated, rural landscape fright fest make for keen and claustrophobic cinema. The film's four characters are strong and tough and they face their fears, if not always courageously, then at least tenaciously.

Deft direction and strong performances from its all-female cast guide The Ritual, a riveting isolation horror film. This is the fresh, exciting Netflix movie I've been wanting for months. Or for years, it seems. The cast, a claustrophobic cave setting draped in red light, and an anarchic, vicious fight to the death. Need I say more about one of the most physically taxing movies of the century? It is one of the better horror entertainments of the last few years. The film is indisputably and pleasurably nerve-jangling. One of the scariest films of this or any decade. Ultimately, the film is the purest kind of horror film – ruthless, unforgiving, showing no mercy. The best horror film about isolation since The Descent (2005). The film is already unusual for being a horror movie with an all-female cast, but it's even more unique for being the kind of movie that explores the damage caused by a friend's betrayal. Here is a movie so precise and cautious with its material that every moment, every suggestion or action, becomes an experience that involves us to alarming lengths. Super-scary and vicious, both psychologically and physically, this cleverly produced chill-ride is edgy British horror at its very best. It's nasty, unpleasant and sadistic but brutally efficient and undeniably effective. There are inconsistencies and frustrating ambiguities, but this is another reliable, vigorous horror experience for genre fans. Once it gets going, it shakes you and keeps shaking you. The film may not be a classic, but it's likely to remain with you for a while. It is to the film-maker's credit that these scenes are filled with real tension and edge-of-your-seat moments. I would recommend seeing the film in the daytime, because the feeling of the sun on your flesh as you walk out of the theater will cheer you up in ways that you had heretofore never imagined. Seriously. The violence is brutal, but the smart psychology and multilayered screenplay provide the true satisfaction. Benefiting from well-concealed reveals, shocking developments, truly unnerving antagonists, taut editing and a hair-raising score, this neverending nightmare is easily the best horror flick of 2018. The film is a gut-wrenching thrill ride and one of the spookiest times you'll ever have in the dark. It is no masterpiece, but it is very well crafted, with some effective "gotcha" moments.

Simon says The Ritual receives: