RITUAL (MODUS ANOMALI) (2012)

Studio:       Screen Media Darkside
Director:    Joko Anwar
Writer:       Joko Anwar
Producer:  Sheila Timothy
Stars:     Rio Dewanto, Hannah Al Rashid, Izzi Isman, Aridh Tritama, Sadha Triyudha, Jose Gamo, Marsha Timothy, Surya Saputra

Review Score: 

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Summary:

Suffering from amnesia, a man awakens after being buried alive to begin a desperate search for his missing family. 

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

A man suddenly wakes in the forest and shakes off the dirt from being buried alive in a shallow grave. He stumbles through the woods until he finds a cabin. Inside are a television and a video camera labeled “press play.” The recording shows a masked killer stabbing a pregnant woman. The man stumbles backwards and discovers the woman’s body on the floor in the room.

The man flees back to the woods. He checks his pockets and learns from an identification card that his name is John Evans. John also finds a photo of the murdered woman with two children.

At night, John takes refuge in a shack. When he hears someone approaching, John hides in an empty trunk. The intruder seals John inside and sets the trunk on fire. John kicks his way out.

A brother and sister hide in the forest. Desperate to reunite with their father, the girl reminds her brother that they cannot go to the police.

John returns to the cabin and watches more home movies. He flees again after seeing someone stalking him outside. While running, an arrow strikes John’s arm.

The young girl arms her brother with a knife and tells him to remain hidden while she searches for their father. John rigs a spear trap for his pursuer that he inadvertently triggers to kill the girl. After John grieves and leaves the scene, the little boy discovers his sister’s dead body.

Suspecting an attacker from behind, John whirls around suddenly and hacks the boy’s throat with a machete as he approaches silently. Distraught, John stumbles until he ends up following the sound of an alarm clock. John digs the alarm clock out of shallow ground and finds the body of a man. On the man’s stomach is carved the message, “go back to the beginning.”

John returns to his open grave and finds a pouch. Inside is a box with the words “the truth” scrawled onto the lid. The box holds two syringes. John injects himself and begins to writhe in pain before passing out.

John awakens as a more determined man. He makes his way purposefully to a car hidden underneath camouflage netting. In the visor is a photo of John with a previously unseen woman and child. John takes a cell phone from the glove compartment and calls his wife and son, telling them that he is on his way home.

While driving slowly along the forest road, John sees a family pulling up to a cabin for a holiday. John befriends the husband and is invited inside. John knocks out the husband and holds his wife hostage while threatening their two teenage boys. John fights both boys and knocks them unconscious with chloroform.

John takes the family’s video camera and deletes everything that shows the husband/father. He then records a video of himself impersonating the man. Disguising himself in hospital scrubs, John next records himself murdering the woman. He then writes a note and leaves it next to the unconscious boys along with several weapons.

John kills the man and buries him in the forest along with the alarm clock. He calls his wife to tell her that he has been delayed one more day. John then rigs a heap of dirt to fall on top of him while he takes an injection and lies back down in the open grave. The note left for the two brothers reads: “You try to leave the forest, I kill your father. You try to go to the Police, I kill your father. You want to find your father alive, come look for me and kill me. I locked him somewhere and the key is inside my body. Find me and kill me.”

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Review:

Even though it is already relatively brief at 85 minutes, “Ritual” would be much easier to universally recommend if it were only half that length.  Alternately known as “Modus Anomali,” the story has a devilish twist that might have been more satisfying if it had been delivered in a different format.  The carrot of the climax falls just shy of being meaty enough to dangle as a reward in front of those with short attention spans.

Writer/director Joko Anwar purposefully starts the story already in progress.  The suspense comes from making sure that the viewer enters at a starting point that gives him/her no more information than the amnesia-challenged protagonist.

John Evans is the mystery man who rises from the dirt of a shallow forest grave to set events in motion.  Unsure of who he is, where he is, or how he got there, his only clue is the photograph in his wallet of a wife and two children.  Things escalate from bad to worse when John makes his way to a cabin in the woods and settles in for a snuff film on the television featuring the pregnant woman from his picture.  Her dead body happens to be in the room with him, too.  Unfortunately for John, an unknown assailant hot on his trail sees to it that there is no time to mourn.  John flees back to the trees and enters into a seesaw battle of hunter-prey with his would-be assassin.

Most of the familiar clichés used to describe thrilling moments in movies can apply here.  “Ritual” is at its peak during “pulse pounding” chases and “nail-biting” moments of tense anticipation.  In a good way, the mystery is maddening as the mind frantically grabs each jigsaw piece of a clue or story revelation in an eager race to complete the puzzle.

At issue is the fact that these peaks only rise so high because the valleys are so low.  “Ritual” takes its time ramping up with an overdose of scenes that involve aimless wandering through trees, breathlessly waiting for a pursuer to pass, and just generally stumbling around with little to show for the effort.  John’s predicament is established immediately, but “Ritual” extends itself to feature length with continued illustrations of the man’s frustration, confusion, and desperation.  There can only be so many shots of John sweating, screaming, and pondering his situation before the momentum deadens to a standstill.

“Ritual” rings the right bells as a clever head scratcher while teetering dangerously on the edge of overstaying its welcome.  Try too hard to solve the mystery before John does and you probably will.  The initial cast of characters can be counted on one hand and the film is mostly wordless.  Even by telling the tale backwards, the plot is fairly to the point and leaves no room for distractions to throw anyone off the scent.  The best course of action is to ride the wave willingly and to not let the brain stray too far ahead of the story.  Simply suspecting how things turn out would ruin the best thing that the movie has going for it, which is the mystery of why this family is being hunted by an unidentified stalker in the forest.

“Ritual” has its work cut out for it when it comes to engaging the impatient.  And while the answer to the question burning at the movie’s core may not be mind-blowing or earth shaking, it does fulfill the promise made by the premise in a way that makes the mouth of a slightly fiendish mind twist into a wicked smirk.

Review Score:  65

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