The Ritual Killer Review

PLOT: A detective teams up with a professor of African studies to stop a serial killer who has been making ritual sacrifices of local youths.

REVIEW: The story and screenplay for The Ritual Killer were cobbled together by a writing team of five different people: Bob Bowersox, Francesco Cinquemani, Luca Giliberto, Jennifer Lemmon, and Joe Lemmon. Director George Gallo then endeavored to bring their work to the screen as a film that really feels like it wants to live up to classic, gritty serial killer crime thrillers of the past. They even got a dash of Seven in there by casting Morgan Freeman in a supporting role. The film just wasn’t written quite well enough to reach the heights of the classics, and at times it seems like the script was assembled by having each of the writers contribute their favorite elements from past movies.

You’ve got the detective on the edge, plagued by a tragic past. You’ve got the angry police Captain who doesn’t agree with our lead’s methods. The detective teaming up with a civilian to crack the case. The involvement of a detective in Italy, reminiscent of Hannibal. And a serial killer who’s into the occult. At its best moments, The Ritual Killer vaguely brings to mind the 1990 horror thriller The First Power… but it also doesn’t have enough of a budget to be as cool as The First Power was when the action breaks out.

The Ritual Killer may be underwhelming and unoriginal – and it peters out with an ending that’s not as satisfying as it should have been – but it’s not a bad way to kill 91 minutes. It’s interesting enough to hold your attention most of the time, especially once you get past the clunky first act. Part of that is due to the fact that Morgan Freeman is in the cast. Cole Hauser also does a great job playing the flawed lead, Detective Lucas Boyd, a guy who has a whole lot of flashbacks to bad times in his past that ultimately didn’t feel all that necessary. Vernon Davis isn’t given a lot to do as the serial killer Boyd is after (no spoiler there, this isn’t a whodunnit mystery), but is captivating when he’s on the screen. Other notable cast members include Peter Stormare, who is usually great to see in any movie but was miscast as the police Captain in this one, and Giuseppe Zeno as the Italian detective who is often shown speaking English, but would have been better off speaking subtitled Italian.

The movie has a set-up that could have made for a better movie. The killer is an African witch doctor (thus why a professor of African studies gets involved) who believes that killing young victims and taking body parts from them has turned him into an invincible warrior. Now he’s a killer for hire, sacrificing people to bring more wealth and power to his rich clientele. Gallo and his writers weren’t afraid of going dark and disturbing with the idea, either. A couple of the victims the killer claims along the way are quite young. But the execution of the concept is lacking. For example, how can you have a killer who thinks he’s invincible, and even demonstrates his enhanced abilities in a couple scenes, and then not have the film wrap up with a bone-crunching final battle? It’s a letdown.

Freeman doesn’t have extensive screen time, but he does well with what he was given to work with in the scenes he has. Which is more scenes that you might expect, but not as many as you would hope for. And one particular scene gives Freeman the chance to work with what may be the least convincing actor he has ever encountered in his career…. But it’s really Hauser who carries the film on his shoulders, playing a character you might not like very much at times, but we need him to stop the killer.

If you’re only on the market for a great serial killer thriller, you can keep moving right past The Ritual Killer. But if you don’t mind watching something that would have been right at home filling space on a video store shelf twenty-five years ago, this fits the bill.

The Ritual Killer is getting a theatrical release on March 10th, but the more satisfied viewers are likely to be the ones who stay home and check it out on VOD on the same date.

Morgan Freeman

AVERAGE

6