Rating: NR | Runtime: 98 minutes
Release Date: June 6th, 2025 (USA)
Studio: XYZ Films
Director(s): David Midell
Writer(s): David Midell / Enrico Natale & David Midell (story)

Do you have trouble seeing, Father?

If David Midell’s cinematic rendition of the famed American exorcism of forty-six-year-old “Anna Ecklund” in 1928 teaches us anything, it’s that exorcisms are inherently uninteresting. Boring even. Because each day is the same. Passages from the Bible are read aloud, the possessed victim writhes in pain while a demonic presence speaks in foreign languages, and the participants are forced to question their faith. When things go too far, someone shuts it down either because the session has completed or they are too afraid to continue. It’s not therefore about the “patient” at all, but the priests and nuns desperately searching for answers at a time when their understanding of God is its weakest.

That is what The Ritual delivers. Multiple days. Multiple setbacks. Multiple injuries. And the moment that will cement Father Joseph Steiger’s (Dan Stevens) faith by finally heeding the call to act rather than question. It makes sense since we’re told Midell used his notes (published as a pamphlet entitled “Begone Satan!” in Nazi Germany, before being translated in English, that allowed this event to be considered the most documented exorcism in American history) to piece together the month of sessions performed on-screen. I say “told” because Steiger isn’t given credit beyond mention via interstitial. No, Midell and Enrico Natale earn the story credit instead, causing us to wonder how much we’re watching is actually true beyond the names.

There’s also a prevailing notion that Father Steiger had a choice about allowing the exorcism to be performed in his church. The Abbess (Patricia Heaton) blames him for letting evil into their sanctuary and questions his leadership despite a scene showing he tried to decline. Bishop Edwards (Patrick Fabian) all but demands Steiger play host because the powers that be already decided for him (although factual accounts say Steiger did suggested the location, so maybe the confusion is a result of playing fast and loose with details). He would take notes while two sisters assisted in German-American Capuchin friar and Roman Catholic priest Father Theophilus Riesinger’s (Al Pacino) ceremony. They would rid young Emma Schmidt (Abigail Cowen, not forty-six-years-old)—the real name of “Anna Ecklund”—of whatever inhabited her.

I believe the ritual is supposed to be boring in its routine repetition because we’re supposed to worry less about Emma’s wellbeing than that of Father Steiger. He is the one being tested as a result of Riesinger’s theatrics. Will he allow the nuns in his care (including Ashley Greene) to keep getting hurt? Will he allow the Reverend Mother to collect enough evidence to send him packing to a different congregation? Will he be able to grieve the sudden death of his brother with the care necessary for healing while also dealing with a supposed demon throwing it in his face? Will he find the strength and conviction to stay on his path as a man of God when this uncertain chaos tempts him to give up?

Unfortunately, Father Steiger isn’t presented as someone worthy of our intrigue. Not when everyone else is much more compelling despite having far less to do. Riesinger and Emma are the draw and yet they become window dressing for Steiger’s epiphany. Even Greene’s Sister Rose supplies more dramatic weight as she too wrestles with her faith before being relegated to the fringes as another point of seduction for the demon and Steiger to latch onto despite her doing nothing to warrant it. Steiger is just a guy in mourning who’s susceptible to the darkness of the situation as well as the coincidental signs of God that might ultimately renew his dedication to the cloth. He gets to choose.

As such, we receive all the usual clichés of better exorcism titles populating a psychological study of a priest that wants to be a horror film so bad it relies on loud music cues to jolt us awake during jump scares the filmmakers obviously didn’t think were effective on their own. The Ritual does look good with some truly gruesome moments of bloody, fleshy vomit and wire work once Emma is off-leash (Cowen is giving her all in a physically demanding role), so it’s easy to be frustrated that Midell didn’t just pivot to B-movie carnage. His straddling of the line between all-out genre gore and introspective crisis of purpose leaves the whole feeling at war with itself because the drama never compels us to forget we’re still watching in the hope for more chaos.

Pacino’s accent isn’t as distracting as some have said (it just sounded like he was channeling his Shylock from Merchant of Venice). I had more trouble figuring out if Heaton was doing one herself or merely supplying some wild line readings. The real oddity for me was the faux shaky-cam aesthetic that seemed to amplify during those jump scares to comedic effect despite there not being one intentionally humorous bone in the entirety of the work. I dismissed the first instance as the price of doing business, but subsequent ones had me chuckling as I recalled the camerawork in The ‘Burbs when Tom Hanks and Rick Ducommun realize they’re holding a human femur. I knew things had become too self-serious when all I wanted to do was pretend the film’s goal was for me to laugh.

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Dan Stevens and Al Pacino in THE RITUAL; courtesy of XYZ Films Releasing.