Look, none of these decisions are completely unimaginable. But they're unbearable when lumped together, and constantly rationalized through pouty, all-caps dialogue.
Barton doesn't just make his reluctant outdoorsmen shut each other down any time a moment of introspection presents itself. He also makes Dom, the only character with a modest emotional range, seem especially whiny and annoying. This is mostly because Dom is the least bro-y of Luke's friends. He has a wife, knows his body well enough to be familiar with its regular stress points, and has glasses. He's sensitive, and in this movie, that's a bad thing. It means that Dom also has a reputation for arguing about everything, and is therefore the only friend who explicitly blames Luke for Rob's death. So, when Dom is confronted by a supernatural life-or-death situation, Dom inevitably behaves selflessly, and tells Luke that saving yourself is the right thing to do when faced with an impossible fight-or-flight response. This one humanizing moment is hilariously meager given how insufferable Dom is throughout the rest of the film.
But then the needlessly drawn-out macho conclusion arrives in time to drive home an especially obnoxious trope: men who bully, fight, and punch their way past their feelings are somehow more fit to survive than anyone who thinks, or feels their way into a problem. "The Ritual" is, ultimately, a lousy movie where man tries to not feel guilty, then encounters his sublimated emotions in the form of a strange wood-land happening, and then must fight his way past those knotty emotions. Bruckner does a fine job with the film's scare scenes simply by emphasizing rustling leaves, flashlight lens flares, and oh yeah, a giant monster that actually looks creepy. But Barton's grating dialogue (actual line: "Your ritual begins tonight"), and thin characterizations, make "The Ritual" the most disappointing kind of bad horror movie: the kind that's too smart to be this dumb.
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