III: The Ritual

Two sisters, who have just lost their mother to an illness that has plagued their village, only have each other to lean on. When one of them becomes gravely ill and the villagers decide that those who are sick must be quarantined, the other turns to their priest for a place to hide. While caring for her sister, she comes across a strange book in the priest's home and learns there is a ritual that may help save her sister. She approaches the priest, who agrees to help, and they begin the ritual in which the healthy sister must enter her ill sister's subconscious. There she must find her sister's biggest fear and eliminate it to break the grip of the illness. The illness has taken over and made the ill sister's subconscious a dangerous and horrific place but the healthy sister is willing to brave it to save her sister. Will it work? This is your plot.

Let's start with the good things about this film. It is a visually appealing film. Some of the scenery is beautifully portrayed with nice reddish hues. Even the horror aspects of the film have been nicely done. The acting is quite well too and the story, while not a new idea, has a few changes from the norm. There's a twist.

The bad things. The pace is really slow but it does draw you into it. There's not a lot of character development and that takes away from your ability to become invested in the characters. The story needed some work. By that I mean not everything was explained to my liking and there were some situations that were sorta vital that lacked detail.

My take away from this is that it isn't an awful film. It had some problems but it held my interest. I'd like to give it 6.5 stars but we don't have that option here so I rounded up to a 7. I'm glad I checked it out.

This is a strange combination of true creepiness and stunning visuals albeit very dark. It's a Russian movie so it's in subtitles, which is good because unless 1000% would be put in setting this to English, it would not be as effective. So a town has a infection killing its folk and two girls want to stop it with the help of a Priest. That's the barebones of it, but the visuals are so magnificent in a perfect darkness like way . So indulge in this film strange and haunting in a artistic vein.

This one was close to a 6 stars on my behalf, but I decided to bring it down to 5, purely on the plot. Coming out with great potential, it feels like it achieved so little, wanting so more, promising the same, but delivering far less.

Perhaps it was a hat too big for the producers, the director, but they surely enough prepared for the movie. The effects, tho lovely, are rare and short, and I think they could have stayed for a little longer. The soundtrack is beyond believable, you'll have to check it out for yourself in order to believe so.

The story, is good, but the execution feels rushed, like they really wanted to get somewhere, and they decided to do it while holding their breath. Still it was an awesome experience, I do recommend this little gem, try something different, you won't be disappointed.

Cheers!

Saw this at the IMAGINE film festival 2015 in Amsterdam. Took its time to build up steam, yet not boring. "The ritual" as it was announced in the synopsis, was to be executed more than once, but I did not know that beforehand. After the first time, assuming it was the last and only, it felt as an anti-climax. Nothing nasty was revealed, and life seemed to go on as if nothing happened. I stood corrected when materializing more scary the second time, for me the real climax. But there was still more to come. Which dirty secret was revealed out of the third and last ritual, escaped me. Maybe executing the ritual three times was essential in itself, three (like seven) being a magical number in many such circumstances. Anyway, the film title III (Roman numerals, so not three capital I's) emphasizes implicitly that the number three is important. No other explanation for this film title springs to mind after having seen it from beginning to end.

The sound track supported the proceedings but was often too much on the foreground, to the extent that it took away my attention from what was happening. That may be a fault of my own, as I faintly recognized most of the music, and was distracted while trying to pinpoint what it was exactly. A professional film composer (I forgot his name) said once that a good sound track should be unobtrusive and hardly noticed, but I'm not sure his word is law under his colleagues.

All in all, I did not get what I anticipated, so a bit disappointed, but no compelling reason to ask my money back. I think there were ample ingredients left unused. One could have arrived at a more complex story and better execution, in addition to a few extra dramatic developments that were definitely needed. The semi-dark village, its people and its buildings bring in their twilight "horror" atmosphere almost by definition. I experienced most of the tension and creepiness while wandering through Mirra's subconsciousness, but not to its full potential. These scenes were visualized the same as dreams are usually shown, by enlarging external influences (e.g. banging on doors) and by slow-motion effects (e.g. dragging protagonist's walks, to never reach the intended destination). It usually works out on the viewer as artificial, and thus defeats its purpose altogether by setting the viewer on a distance rather than sucking him into the story. In a good Horror film such elements are presented in a subtle way, to involve us in the proceedings rather than distracting us. This movie fails halfway in this respect.

Russian horror flick but be aware that it isn't going to be a gory ride or a flick full of action going on. This is a slow moving flick but made with excellent cinematography.

It's all about possession in a small town were everybody is getting sick and two sisters are being involved in the sickness. One of them is getting sick up to the other to cure her with the help of a priest.

In fact, that is the story but the flick is full of creepy and weird shots. As said earlier the editing and the use of the camera was well done. But of course not everybody is into arty flicks. If you are into possession horror then this is a must see, if you are into gory flicks and can't stand slow moving flicks full of blah blah then leave it.

Gore 0/5 Nudity 0,5/5 Effects 2/5 Story 2,5/5 Comedy 0/5