The thin veil between sanity and the abyss trembles in David Midell’s The Ritual, a film that unearths the chilling, sepia-toned account of Emma Schmidt’s purported demonic possession in the isolated expanse of 1928 Iowa. Before us is not mere fiction, but a whispered claim of history—a documented spiritual siege.
At its ravaged core stands Emma, her body a canvas for an unspeakable torment, attended by the solemn figures of Father Theophilus Riesinger, his faith perhaps as worn as his vestments, and Father Joseph Steiger, younger, his resolve yet untested by the full depth of the shadow.
The narrative beckons not towards easy spectacle, but into the heart of a grim, protracted procedure, an arduous liturgy against a presence that defies earthly reason. This Iowa farmhouse becomes a stark arena for more than one kind of war: a visible confrontation with an alleged entity, and the silent, agonizing erosion of spirit within those who bear witness, their souls grappling with the void.
Whispers from a Documented Abyss
The film anchors itself to the brittle parchment of a past horror, claiming the 1928 Iowa case of Emma Schmidt—she of the alias Anna Ecklund—as its desolate core. We are told this is “the most documented case of possession and exorcism in the twentieth century,” a pronouncement that trails with it the scent of authenticity, the weight of the “Begone Satan!” pamphlet penned by those original spiritual combatants, Fathers Riesinger and Steiger.
Yet, what is it to document the unseen, the recesses of a soul in such profound extremis? Midell’s lens peers into this supposed history, attempting to reconstruct its somber 1928 tableau, its period details a fragile stage for the ensuing spiritual warfare.
A crucial decision casts a long shadow: the narrative cleaves to the stark silhouette of literal demonic occupation, eschewing the labyrinthine, perhaps more unsettling, paths of severe mental illness or the deep scars of trauma that many modern readings might impose upon Emma’s agony.
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This choice, while perhaps honoring the letter of the historical account as perceived by its chroniclers, bypasses a different kind of darkness – the terror of the mind unmoored, of suffering that finds no named demon to exorcise. The film’s insistence on the extended, multi-day ritual becomes then a liturgy of attrition, each day a testament to endurance, but also a relentless treading of ground that feels both ancient and agonizingly familiar.
Thus, the “true story” insignia it bears becomes a complex artifact: for some, it may imbue the unfolding dread with a chilling gravitas; for others, it sharpens the scrutiny, questioning not just the events themselves, but the very frame through which such profound human suffering is offered for our gaze.
Vessels of Affliction, Ministers of Doubt
At the epicenter of this spiritual maelstrom writhes Emma Schmidt, given a harrowing physical vocabulary by Abigail Cowen. Here is a body contorted into a geography of torment, a voicebox commandeered for a lexicon of the damned—vomiting forth the bile of an indwelling shadow, her skin a canvas of self-inflicted wounds. Cowen’s portrayal is a study in abject suffering, a raw physicality that strains against the confines of the possessed archetype. Yet, one peers through the visceral horror for a glimpse of Emma herself, questioning if any flicker of the original soul remains, or if she is reduced to a passive theater for this grim morality play.
Opposite this spectacle of ruin stands Al Pacino’s Father Theophilus Riesinger, a figure seemingly carved from aged wood, his Mitteleuropean accent a curious, perhaps alienating, patina. His is not the firebrand exorcist of cinematic lore; rather, a performance etched in an almost spectral weariness, his methods – the stark utility of restraints, the mumbled Latin – suggesting a long, disillusioning war. Does a crisis of faith stir beneath this stoic surface, or is it the profound fatigue of one who has stared too long into the void? The film hints at such shadows but leaves them largely undisturbed, spectral questions hanging in the stale air of the sickroom.
Dan Stevens’ Father Joseph Steiger offers a counterpoint of more visible unease. His earnestness, his initial recoil from the brutal mechanics of the rite, paints a portrait of a faith still too new to bear such fissures. A past loss, it is suggested, already hollows him, making his presence at this crucible a particularly fragile one. His interactions with Theophilus, his fraught witness to Emma’s degradation, trace the painful trajectory of a belief system confronting an evil that mocks its pieties.
And then, the nuns—silent attendants, their devotion met with torn flesh and shattered nerves. They are the often unremarked upon chorus, their bodies absorbing the shrapnel of this spiritual combat, their quiet fortitude a stark contrast to the grand pronouncements of the male clergy. Their wounds, a crushed hand, a scalp torn, become stigmata of a different sort, testaments to a faith that serves even as it is brutalized, their suffering a poignant, if underdeveloped, footnote in this dark chronicle.
A Restless Lens on an Unquiet Room
Director David Midell’s vision for The Ritual seems one of stark austerity, an attempt to capture the grim mechanics of spiritual warfare without the usual consolations of spectacle. The film’s pulse is a slow, deliberate throb, a cadence of attrition that mirrors, perhaps too faithfully, the protracted nature of the exorcism itself.
This restraint, this turning away from overt “supernatural fireworks,” aims for a realism that can feel both brave and burdensome, fostering a low-key horror that seeps rather than startles. Does this monotonous pacing mirror the very tedium of enduring evil, or does it simply risk a similar weariness in its audience?
The camera’s eye, reportedly a handheld, nervous presence, seeks to amplify this rawness. It trembles, it lurches, adopting a “documentary-style” proximity that might intend to thrust us into the heart of the unfolding dread. Yet, such a visual language is a precarious gamble; for every moment of perceived immediacy, there’s the potential for a jarring self-consciousness, a shaky verité that can, as some accounts suggest, pull one out of the moment, evoking incongruous echoes of mundane television rather than sacred terror.
The relentless crash-zooms, too, might punctuate with an artificial urgency what is otherwise a study in slow erosion. Amidst this striving for the unvarnished, certain visual details—an allegedly dehydrated Emma retaining an inexplicably dewy complexion—pierce the veil of verisimilitude, small ruptures in the film’s constructed reality. The exorcism’s more tangible manifestations, the levitations and contortions, are rendered with a commitment to practical effect, grounding the unholy in the physical, even as the gaze capturing them remains restless.
The aural landscape, one infers, follows this path of strained naturalism. If overt scares are muted, then sound likely works through unsettling ambiences, the disquieting creak of a house under siege, or the subtle incursions of an unseen malevolence, punctuated perhaps by an equally unnerving silence.
Echoes in a Hollowed Core
Beneath the film’s somber surface, thematic currents stir with a disquieting inertia. The priests, Riesinger and Steiger, become reluctant barometers of faith’s fraying edges when pressed against an intractable darkness; yet, their doubt often feels more like a sketched outline than a deeply plumbed abyss.
Evil, in this depiction, is less a grand, theological pronouncement and more a persistent, wearing presence – its objectives obscured, its methods a litany of familiar torments. The narrative nods towards human endurance, the raw acceptance of suffering, but its decision to skirt the nuanced terrain between supernatural siege and psychological disintegration leaves Emma’s ordeal feeling philosophically shallow, a spectacle of affliction without a deeper inquiry into its source.
This thematic hesitancy finds its echo in a script that seems to falter in its convictions. Accounts of “vacuous discussions” and an “unelaborate” structure suggest a framework perhaps too frail to bear the weight of its solemn subject. If character arcs, particularly the priests’ internal landscapes, remain underdeveloped, their personal histories mere whispers, then the connection between private grief and public ritual feels tenuous.
The narrative lapses, such as the inexplicable abandonment of the possessed Emma, further fragment the experience, transforming what might have been a study in claustrophobic dread into something less coherent. Even the choice to depict the exorcism’s monotony, a potentially potent reflection on the grueling nature of such battles, teeters precariously, risking not profound insight into existential weariness but simple disengagement from a drama that withholds too much of its heart.
An Unsettled Echo in the Canon of Dread
In the well-trodden landscape of cinematic exorcisms, The Ritual carves a space more through its somber intent than through any radical departure. It appears content to walk familiar paths, its “true story” claim a well-worn map, its demonic manifestations a litany recited from a shared, aging hymnal of horror.
What lingers, then, is not a jolt of novelty, but perhaps the raw, physical commitment of Abigail Cowen’s portrayal of Emma—a body besieged—or the film’s own stoic, almost penitential, insistence on depicting the grueling, unglamorous labor of a drawn-out spiritual siege.
One is left less with answers about the nature of evil or the resilience of faith, and more with a quiet hum of disquiet, a sense of attrition. Does it ultimately deepen our contemplation of possession, or does it merely rehearse its forms with a muted reverence?
Its place may be that of a footnote in the larger cinematic discourse on faith confronting the void—a testament, perhaps, to how even the most documented of human terrors can, in their retelling, become faint and unsettlingly familiar echoes, leaving us to ponder the persistent, hollow spaces where true darkness resides.
The Ritual is scheduled for release on June 6, 2025.
Full Credits
Director: David Midell
Writers: David Midell, Enrico Natale
Producers: Enrico Natale, Ross Kagan Marks, Andrew Stevens, Mitchell Welch
Executive Producers: Lee Broda, Walter Josten, Jeff Rice, Jordan Wagner, Chris Paladino, Nate Bolotin, Nick Spicer, Aram Tertzakian, Maxime Cottray, Matthew Helderman, Luke Taylor, Tyler Gould, Meadow Williams, Isaac Rosner, Cole Garson, Tamra Bohorquéz, Sharad Chib, Jeff Holland, Rick Moore
Cast: Al Pacino, Dan Stevens, Ashley Greene, Abigail Cowen, Patricia Heaton, Patrick Fabian, María Camila Giraldo, Meadow Williams, Enrico Natale, Ritchie Montgomery, Liann Pattison, Courtney Rae Allen, Emily Brinks
Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Adam Biddle
Editor: Enrico Natale
Composers: Jason Lazarus, Joseph Trapanese
The Review
The Ritual
The Ritual attempts a solemn meditation on a documented torment, yet its philosophical reach is curtailed by a faltering script and unresolved thematic depths. Abigail Cowen’s raw embodiment of affliction and a pervasive mood of attrition leave an imprint, but the film lingers as a muted, familiar echo in the vast chamber of spiritual horror, its gravest questions largely unvoiced.
PROS
- Visceral lead performance from Abigail Cowen.
- Commendable attempt at a grave, atmospheric tone.
- Effectively depicts the grueling, protracted nature of the rite.
CONS
- Shallow thematic exploration.
- Underdeveloped script and characters.
- Distracting or ineffective camera work at times.
- Pacing risks monotony over depth.
- Offers few fresh insights to its genre.
