oksanasinner

I like that it's faithful to Lovecraft's story for the most part and showing the "earthly" things in grayscale was a clever move. However, this film fails miserably where it moves away from the source material.

I enjoyed the first half. It was atmospheric, intriguing, bleak but beautiful. In the second half it starts rehearsing itself as if just to fill time. Very slowly leads it up to the exact conclusion you thought it would have. The latter isn't necessarily bad just feels unrewarding after sitting through so much filler.

The creature design is the only cool part of the movie. I recommend to anyone who hasn't watched it yet to skip until the last 20 minutes or simply to look up the pictures of the monster and save 90 minutes of your life. Most of the film is just a cycle of flashbacks of the same scene (they happen like 5 times or even more) and characters arguing with one another (this also becomes very tedious because the characters aren't interesting to begin with). The plot itself is straightforward, predictable and very little is left up to speculation. The monster is basically an embodiment suppressed emotions, which is a concept explored in every second monster movie since the beginning of the genre. Except in the Ritual it's being bashed into our head like we're too stupid to understand more subtle ways.