WEEK ONE (Sept 28-Oct 4): FEARFUL FORESTS
More than just being a cheeky coincidence for my own yearly ritual,
Rituals caught my eye during research for two reasons:
1) It was described as being the Canadian
Deliverance
2) It was also described as being a perpetually underrated horror film
While I was drawn to more the latter, it should be noted that while not strictly a horror film in of itself,
Deliverance certainly made people, men in particular, more wary of camping trips in a way not too dissimilar from what
Jaws did for trips to the beach. I haven't personally seen the film myself yet (please don't shoot me!), but its influence was so strong and so distinct that there's a sense that one doesn't necessarily need to in order to understand the power it wielded. It's not often that you get films that try to draw favorable comparison to a film like that, to the point where a film like
Southern Comfort (soon to be viewed for this week's theme, I might add) included it in one of its taglines.
But this isn't an essay about a film I haven't seen, yet somehow managed to find time to include two of its closest points of comparison for this year's marathon. This is about my thoughts on one of them, and I must say that if this film has compared as favorably to
Deliverance as its known to, then I should make an effort in the near future to watch it, perhaps as an extra credit assignment of sorts.
Rituals begins with an inspired dick joke. Difficult as it sounds that anything could possibly be inspired about that kind of humor, a lot of credit goes to the film for not making it obvious that we're going to be getting a dick joke, and the reason for that is because it largely revolves around an ethical debate on whether or not a doctor should get into that field, let alone have dreams of franchising the procedure. It ends with a punchline where it's finally revealed what the procedure is for, and it generates the expected laughs.
What makes it a strong scene for a film that has a lot of them is that while you're anticipating the punchline, it manages to sneak in a hell of a lot of character development for guys you won't get to know their names for another couple of scenes. Points and counterpoints are barbed with personal traits that don't call much attention to themselves: one guy is a bit passive-aggressive, another more direct with criticism, another still with bigger plans. It goes on like that, and it becomes apparent soon after that this is a film that treasures inference more than outright explanation. When past operations get discussed, they are done in such a way where these men wouldn't need to explain the nuts and bolts, because, after all, they're all doctors here, but it never gets too technical that someone not as versed in the field can't catch on to at least the gist. There's a great deal of history shared between these men, where they know the routines of everyone they know, and just how to deal with them when someone steps on their toe. All this without a single backstory dump.
And then someone goes and steals their boots while they're sleeping.
The things we take for granted when we're out of our element would be miles long, but as it turns out in this film, the disappearance of their boots is what starts bringing out the worst in these guys. One of them, DJ, chides them for failing to read the itinerary and reading the suggestion of bringing along an extra pair of shoes, which charges him with the task of having to be the one to head out to find help. In what couldn't possibly be more than half a page's worth of dialogue, we find out more about the kind of man DJ is with how he treats his supposed friends than we would have if he simply stated how he felt about them for god knows how long. We hear more chiding from the rest of the group about botched operations and the ethics of keeping vegetables alive. Frustration doesn't just set in, so much as it becomes the only way these men know how to communicate.
And then things get much worse, between them and what beings to happen to them.
If you couldn't tell,
Rituals takes a risky gamble with having largely unsympathetic characters as the focus of the story. It's a tough act to pull off, as it requires a lot of faith in the audience to be on the same wavelength throughout to make an investment that doesn't have the most high-spirited payoff by the end. For
Rituals, though, it makes it even more difficult by being more of a film about inference rather than explanation, so there's no such convenience for anyone to have something spelled out for them. This is especially evident late in the film, when we do finally get a backstory dump about one of the characters, but it's all "wrong," as it's actually being told by one of the other characters, and the character development is more in how the first character stonewalls the other character while he's telling him what he already knows.
For me, it's a gamble that pays off in spades, as even bad people have good stories to tell. While
Rituals is not exactly wanting as far as the performances go, which are great across the board, or for direction, which is strong and is able to render the Ontario wilderness with a mix of haunting beauty and creeping menace that feels understated and lean, it's the story these men have to tell that keeps me glued to my seat. I almost didn't even want to see just who is tormenting these men and why, and it's somewhat appropriate that that particular aspect of the story remains muddled and somewhat unsatisfying, as I knew it wasn't ever going to live up to what happens when all the bullshit and years of resentment of these men finally boil over and rise to the surface. In a weird way, finding out that guys with so many problems are also doctors is scarier than any backwoods psycho with an axe to grind could ever hope to be. That's a hell of a feat to pull off when only one of them uses bear traps.
