THE RITUAL (2025) - Mark Reviews Movies

The Ritual, XYZ Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 5, 2025

Co-writer/director David Midell's The Ritual is at least a bit quieter than one might expect from a story about an exorcism. Oh, there are jump-scares, loud musical stings accompanying them, and plenty of shouted prayers and curses in this movie, to be sure, but in that last category, the climactic part of the exorcism ritual is almost whispered by one of the priests. After all, he has a few things on his mind in that moment that have little to do with the possibility that a young woman might be possessed by a demon or two.

One can see what Midell and co-screenwriter Enrico Natale are attempting with this story, supposedly based on the "most well-documented" exorcism case in the history of the United States (which, as should go without saying, isn't anywhere approaching the idea that it was legitimate, of course). That's to give us a movie as much about its characters, a pair of priests with different degrees of faith and a handful of nuns helping them with the rite, as it is about the usual stuff of this sort of story.

The usual stuff stands out more, though, because it is so familiar, so persistent, and so much of what the story is building toward, even in those smaller and more restrained moments with these characters. Of course, the argument could be made, as the text coda of the movie itself does in its own way, that the reason the horror elements are so familiar is because the real story of this movie has served as the foundation for most literature and cinema featuring exorcism. That doesn't stop the material from at times feeling like a copy of countless copies of other similar movies. Just because the story being told here might be the first of its kind doesn't make the dramatization itself unique in any way.

That's up to the filmmakers to accomplish, and again, it does have some worthwhile ideas to try to pull off that trick. The major part of it is to focus on Fr. Joseph Steiger (Dan Stevens), the parish priest of a small town in Iowa whose church is also home to a convent of nuns. He's a man in some spiritual distress, following the recent death of his brother and a level of guilt about it that becomes clear later in the story. He's an unassuming man and a beloved priest, which might be part of the reason the diocese bishop (played by Patrick Fabian) asks him to help with the troublesome case of a young woman seemingly suffering from demonic possession.

The setting of the story is 1928, so the attitude of the Church and its leaders is somewhat evolving when it comes to matters like possession by demons. Joseph's first thought upon hearing that an allegedly possessed woman is heading to his parish, after several across the country refused to take her in, is to suggest psychological treatment. The bishop insists that all physical and mental health angles for the young woman's case have been pursued and come up short in explaining her behavior, but Joseph is still skeptical and wants to call upon an old friend who's now a doctor before starting any kind of sacramental treatment.

Such is not the opinion of Fr. Theophilus Riesinger (Al Pacino), who has known Emma (Abigail Cowen), the woman in question, since she was a child, had similar symptoms, and apparently recovered from them. Desperate to help this woman who has no surviving family and no other person willing to come to her aid, Theophilus insists he get right the ritual that very night and as many subsequent nights as necessary. All he wants from Jospeh is for the local priest to keep a record of events and from the nuns, led by their Mother Superior (Patricia Heaton), is for them to keep Emma as nourished, calm, and physically restrained as possible.

The rest of the movie, shot in an occasionally distracting handheld style, is pretty much the anticipated formula of such a story. Theophilus recite prayers and incantations, as Emma squirms in bed, starts doing some creepy things with and to her body (Her eyes rolls back in their sockets, and the nuns find her covered in self-inflicted wounds one morning), speaks in language she shouldn't know about personal things in the lives of those around her of which she couldn't possibly be aware. One of the more subtle elements of these scenes, perhaps, is that Midell doesn't have Emma do anything overtly supernatural (although a couple of acts, such as when she lifts a nun played by Ashley Greene off her feet by the hair and a foundation-quaking climax, somewhat push that boundary). There's a logical explanation for everything here, and as Joseph learns about the young woman's past, there could be a psychological rationale for her behavior, too.

This isn't as important as it might seem, however, since the movie doesn't allow much questioning of its story, since so much of it is about the exorcism scenes and the questioning is left to Joseph about his own faith. The Ritual is at its most promising when allows these characters to speak about and discuss those personal matters on their own terms. Mostly, though, it's an ordinary, wholly predictable exorcism tale.

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