This week’s review will cover two films: The Ritual and Jungle; two seemingly unconnected films set on two distinct continents. The Ritual stars no one you’ve never heard of as 4 English Friends honoring their dead pal by hiking in mountainous Sweden. Jungle stars Harry Potter as a recently honorably discharged Israeli Army vet looking for adventure in South America.
The subtext in both of these movies is that nature is a scary, wild place, and out to harm all of us. We have a big problem with the main premise of both of these films because as every viewer of The Walking Dead knows, it’s never the monsters that get you—IT’S ALWAYS your fellow man.
Compared to what we saw previously during Annhilation, it seems that the fairer sex is more competent at surviving the wilderness. The archetypal men in the movies today were fueled by their egos and testosterone while the women we saw depicted in a survival situation used traits stereotypically held by women (collaboration, nurturing, cooperation, problem solving). This is obviously not a #YesAllMen thesis, but we thought it was interesting that the traits that saved or damned either group were the ones that are cliched. Lord of the Flies would be a much different novel if it was a bunch of girls that got stuck on an island together.
Which, conveniently, someone wrote. It’s called Beauty Queens and it’s phenomenal.
There will be spoilers in these reviews so you know exactly what you’re avoiding. Don’t make our mistake.
The Ritual (2017)
The Ritual is billed as a horror film produced by the inestimable Andy Serkis, who we would never blame personally for what we saw today. The only horror we found was that we lost 1 1/2 hours that we’ll never, ever get back. (EVER!). It won positive reviews and one even posted how the monster remained scary even after the big reveal. Perhaps there is another movie titled The Ritual? Because we weren’t impressed.
Whatever version we saw provided abundant time for much at-home chatter during the movie and no annoying “shush, i’m trying to watch the movie” interruptions from the peanut gallery (Mama MWMD). Four Londonites set off to hike the “Appalachian Trail of Sweden” to honor their friend who was killed during a brutal liquor store robbery gone wrong. These dudes have no business being anywhere outside of any city limits anywhere in the world. One bro gracefully trips over a rock and injures his knee and the other 3 friends have an amazing lack of empathy for their encumbered comrade and immediately start arguing about leaving him behind “to go seek help,” which, if you have any sort of survival sense at all, you’ll realize the multitude of reasons of why it’s an awful idea.
Then they arrive at the ingenious idea of leaving the trail to take a shortcut through the woods (because of course an unmarked trail through difficult terrain with four inexperienced hikers is the best way for an injured hiker to get to help faster!) As they trek through the woods, they find some mysterious runes marked on the trees and soon find a disemboweled elk hanging halfway up a tree spookily (as indicated by the sharp notes hit on the soundtrack). They become frightened and instantly run off through the woods and find a seemingly abandoned cabin. In what we can only be an homage to 80’s slasher flicks (the first to sin is the first to die!), the 4 totally disrespect the cabin causing unnecessary damage and even break up the cabin’s table for firewood, despite it being literally a cabin the the woods which was (wait for it) full of trees and deadfall that they could easily use for firewood.
One by one, the 4 friends make every mistake in the book and slowly succumb to the horrors of the forest. In this case, the horror is a secret and remote Swedish “Hill People” Society that worship some weird enormous Were-Elk with human arms located around it’s neck. It seems the Swedes must worship or die. As Katie said, “why have an extra long life if you don’t have access to Netflix?” And as Forrest Gump said, “That’s all I have to say about that.”
We award The Ritual 0 Bad Friends out of 5 (0/👯♂️)
Jungle (2017)
We made the mistake of watching Jungle as well and it was 2 whole hours which we won’t ever get back either (EVER!). Daniel Radcliffe plays a recently discharged Israeli Defense vet who, while traveling alone through Bolivia he meets a Swiss teacher and in short order and serendipitously, his American photographer friend in La Paz. Then they meet Karl, a very strange Austrian who tells them he knows the jungle and that they should travel to meet a remote tribe untouched by modern men. Unable to resist the siren call of true adventure, they agree to join him.
It soon becomes clear that Karl has no idea what he’s doing, but he does have the group’s solitary rifle and that makes him in charge. One of the friends soon injures his feet (a continuation of the theme this week!) and the other 3 immediately start complaining rather than trying to provide aid and comfort to the inflicted. You would think that with his military training, Daniel Radcliffe would be able to provide some basic first aid. It turns out, that he can’t feed himself either.
After the party of 4 splits into two parties of 2, which is a terrible course of action, as any DM will tell you, never split the party. We never see Karl or the Swiss teacher again, but Harry Potter and the American decide to head through the wilds of Boliva on a raft made of hand hewn logs lashed together with jungle vines. What could go wrong? Well I’ll tell you: everything.
The raft quickly hits the rapids and the two are thrown into the raging river and separated. The lucky American is found and brought to civilization where he spends the 2nd half of the movie trying to convince the locals to help look for his friend. (After all he is “the boy who lived!”). They all think he should give it up until he buys the boat of a local who takes pity on him and they begin the search. Meanwhile, Daniel Radcliffe suffers from hallucinations brought on by one, all or a combination of the following: Starvation, Dehydration, Poison, rotten fruit, stress, psilocybin. This is supposedly based on a true story written by Daniel Radcliffe’s character. So, because we don’t want to spoil the surprise ending, we won’t tell you if he’s rescued or not.
We give this move 1 American out of 5 international fools (🇺🇸/5)
In both movies, and in short order not only does it become abundantly clear that these combined 8 n00bs have no business in the wild, they posses no common sense either. Neither one of us here at MWMD are Bear Grills, but we do enjoy the out of doors and know enough to not make the obvious mistakes made by the characters in these movies. Only a citified scriptwriter could feel that making nature scary is the way to frighten a modern audience. If all you ever know of the out of doors is how it’s rendered on your PS4 then maybe it’s true. However, we have more respect for common sense than that.
Movies With My Dad 