The Ritual by Adam Nevill

(pb; 2011)

From the back cover

"Four old university friends reunite for a hiking trip in the Scandinavian wilderness of the Arctic Circle. No longer young men, they have little left in common and tensions rise as they struggle to connect. Frustrated and tired they take a shortcut that turns their hike into a nightmare that could cost them their lives.

"Lost, hungry and surrounded by forest untouched for millennia, they stumble across an isolated old house. Inside, they find the macabre remains of old rites and pagan sacrifices; ancient artefacts and unidentifiable bones. A place of dark ritual and home to a bestial presence that is still present in the ancient forest, and now they’re the prey.

"As the four friends struggle toward salvation they discover that death doesn’t come easy among these ancient trees."


Review

Warning: possible spoilers in this review.

Ritual, a folkloric, black metal version of James Dickey’s Deliverance, is a good first draft of a novel. It has a lot going for it – an impressive immediacy, dread-hued atmosphere, lots of action, and a mostly worthwhile protagonist (Luke) who does not deserve the boneheaded characters  and forest hell he is forced to endure. 

Unfortunately, Ritual’s promise is not realized because its 417-page nightmare runs too long. At two-thirds its length, it would have been excellent; however, Nevill saddles Luke with character-inconsistent doubts and chatty friends who make dumb decisions – their idiocies even threaten to infect Luke for a brief period, as evidenced by his last-hour interactions with them.

Not only that, there are ill-advised point-of-view/tense changes in certain parts of the book, which jarred me out of the novel. Want to show that a character is dreaming while remaining tense/POV consistent? One way (given Ritual's chapter structure) is to start the chapter with: “Luke dreamt,” then describe the dream. To do otherwise feels artsy, forced. . .  and then there is that telegraphed and slice-of-life aphoristic finish, which could have been written by a Hallmark card writer. This, for me, made that overwritten one-third galling, not just a nuisance.

Casual horror fans who do not mind overwriting will probably not mind Ritual’s length or bonehead characters, and that is good (for them), because Nevill is a talented author who has it in him to be a wordsmith -- provided his work gets tighter editing.

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The resulting film was released in the UK on October 13, 2017. It has not been released stateside (yet). It was directed by David Bruckner, from a screenplay by Joe Barton.

Rafe Spall played Luke. Robert James-Collier, billed as Rob James-Collier, played Hutch. Arsher Ali played Phil. Sam Troughton played Dom.

Maria Erwolter played Sara. Paul Reid played Robert. Kerri McLean played Gayle. Jacob James Beswick played "Fiend". Francesca Mula played "Witch".