Is The Ritual Scary? The Verdict and the Whole Plot

A shortcut with a moose in it

Five friends, Phil, Dom, Hutch, Luke and Rob, argue in a pub about where to go on holiday. Rob suggests hiking in Sweden and is turned down. Afterward Luke and Rob go out for alcohol and walk into a robbery. Luke hides while the robbers harass Rob and then kill him. Six months later the other four hike the Kungsleden trail in northern Sweden in his memory. Dom hurts his knee, and Hutch suggests cutting through the forest instead of staying on the marked trail. Luke objects, but Dom says a shortcut is there to be taken. Inside the forest they find a moose that has been gutted and hung from a tree, along with runic symbols carved into the trunks.

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An effigy with antlers has the best bed

A rainstorm at night sends them into an abandoned cabin. Inside they find necklaces with the same symbols and a twig effigy of a headless human torso with antlers for hands. Luke has a nightmare about the robbery. In the morning, Luke's chest has puncture wounds, Hutch is screaming and has wet himself, Dom is catatonic and calling for his wife, Gayle, and Phil is naked and praying to the effigy. The friends try to leave by a side trail that isn't on the map, over Luke's objections. Luke sees a huge figure among the trees, and Dom doesn't believe him. The argument ends with Luke saying they are only here because of Dom, and Dom calling Luke a coward for letting Rob die.

A tent last visited around 1984

The friends find an old tent grown over with plants, containing a backpack and a wallet whose credit card ran out in 1984. Everyone but Hutch takes it as a bad sign, and Hutch says it means they are close to a path other people use. That night Phil's screaming wakes the group, and Hutch is gone and his tent half collapsed. The others search for him until dawn and realize they are lost. They find Hutch gutted and impaled on tree branches, and they bury him. Around sunset an unseen creature drags Phil away and kills him. Luke and Dom run, find a torch-lit path to a small settlement, and rush into a cottage, where someone knocks them out.

A basement with a view of the sacrifice

Luke and Dom wake up tied up in a basement. An old woman examines Luke's chest wounds and shows she has a similar mark of her own. Two men take Dom upstairs and bring him back beaten, and Dom says he is going to be sacrificed to the creature. He tells Luke to run. Later Dom is tied up outside by the villagers while Luke starts to work himself free. This is the scene to brace for, and it comes late in the movie. During the ritual Dom hallucinates his wife stepping out of the forest, then realizes it is the creature, which lifts him and spears him on a nearby tree.

A cabin full of mummies and one axe

A young woman tells Luke that the creature is Moder, a giant moose-like jötunn that is an ancient god. The cult gets immortality, and Moder gets a steady supply of victims. Luke has to choose between worshiping it and being offered up. Once she is gone, Luke frees himself and goes upstairs, where he finds mummified worshipers who begin to move. He sets them on fire, and the cabin burns, which draws Moder. Downstairs he finds a hunting rifle, shoots a cult member, and takes an axe. Moder kills the young woman, and Luke fires at it as he runs. It chases him, fills his head with hallucinations of Rob's death, and pushes him down on his knees. Luke won't bow, hits it with the axe, and flees into a field of sunlight where the creature cannot follow. He shouts back at it, then finds a road.