Avid horror readers are probably familiar with the name Adam Nevill. The acclaimed author has written many terrifying novels, and chief among them is The Ritual, a heart-stopping folk horror that Netflix adapted into a film in 2017.
Even though the film is just two years shy of a decade old, The Ritual remains one of my favorite folk horror movies, especially out of the small amount available on Netflix. In fact, there are some changes that the filmmakers made to the story that I appreciated more than in the book, namely the removal of the book's black metal band involvement that I felt didn't gel with the rest of the story, but I digress.
What makes The Ritual so compelling? The story starts out generic enough, following a group of friends preparing for a hiking trip in Sweden in honor of their late friend, who died during a robbery. The hike gets off to a poor start almost immediately. One guy gets injured right off the bat and they soon stumble upon a grotesque scene of a dead elk. As if that's not creepy enough, there are mysterious symbols carved into the surrounding trees.
Not wanting to find out what left the elk there, the men try to leave the forest, but a series of unfortunate events prevent that from happening. It starts to feel like someone, or something, is keeping them there by force.
The terrifying visuals of Moder
The Ritual eventually reveals its monster, a terrifying beast that looks like a deformed elk with human arms jutting out of its massive mouth. Spoilers ahead, but the creature, and the movie's overall horror, was heavily inspired by Norse folklore. The monster at the center of this film is called a jötuun, one of Loki's abandoned children in the lore.
But The Ritual has one of the scariest depictions of a jötuun I've ever seen on-screen. I won't spoil anything else about the film's plot or how, exactly, this factors into the unfolding story, but I want to express just how frightening and disturbing-looking this monster is.
Film supervisor Ben White previously spoke with Art of VFX about his work on the movie and the thought process that went into designing the jötuun known as Moder.
White revealed that director David Bruckner worked closely with a talented artist named Keith Thompson (who has worked on films like Crimson Peak and Netflix's other Nevill adaptation, No One Gets Out Alive, which also had a really cool monster).
"Their idea of making the creatures head from a human torso and yet still resembling a giant stag or moose was inspired. One detail of the creatures face that had an interesting evolution is the cavity at the bottom where the eyes are. David said he wanted it to look like the male genitals had been ripped out, leaving the flaps of skin which also are a reference to stag antler moulting."
Interestingly, White says the creature's walking and gait were more inspired by a Giraffe's skeleton than a stag's. Perhaps the film's biggest strength is giving this remarkable creature (a mixture of practical and VFX) plenty of time to shine rather than keeping it hidden in the shadows the entire time.