The Ritual

I really liked this movie. Yes, the ending could've been better, a lot better, but it was really psychologically thrilling and spooky, especially for a Netflix movie. I'm really impressed with Netflix's content lately.

I see trends in the low star reviews that I want to address.

1) "the ending was bad" I agree, but the rest of it wasn't. A movie with a bad ending isn't going to be the best movie of all time, but if I enjoy watching 90% of the movie, then I would say I got my time's worth. It's just a shame that it didn't take the opportunity to use the "monsters who scare your mind, not just rip up your body" thing that it could have had going for it.

2) "not scary enough" it was suspenseful and creepy. It's more psychologically thrilling than outright terrifying, and I genuinely wonder which movies these people deem scary enough for them to enjoy because most horror movies really suck, especially in the past 20 years. Where are they finding all these "genuinely scary" movies? Or are they just consistently always disappointed with all of the horror movies they watch but keep watching them anyways? I have a lot of questions.

3) "didn't capture the essence of the book" why does everyone who reads a book that gets made into a movie feel the need to say this? I'm not sure if they just like being pretentious or if they genuinely believe a 90 minute movie must entirely capture the essence of a full length novel. There's no reason to judge them as if they need to be identical. They're standalone works. When I choose to watch the movie, I would hope that they don't drag it out as long as turning a book into a literal script would require.

4) "Blair witch rip off" very few movies, songs, books, etc. are truly original. You can make a movie with the same basic story tone as another one. Add your own twist, or don't, whatever, I'm not the purity police - just make an entertaining work without breaking copyright laws. If I'm entertained, I don't care if it resembles something else that also entertained me.

Anyways, if you read this entire review to learn if this movie is worth a watch, you clearly don't have anything better to do so just watch it. It's not bad.