The Ritual will give you another reason to
avoid hiking in a desolate forest away from all the creature comforts you’re addicted
to. In this video on Nerd Explains, I'll summarize
and explain The Ritual’s story and ending. If you need a breakdown of the monster, if
you want to know how to beat the monster, or just want to see all the kills and monster
scenes, I'll have videos on all of these that you can check out. But this video’s all about explaining the
main events in The Ritual. The Ritual starts off rather casually, with
a group of friends at a bar talking about vacation ideas. There’s mention of Tuscany to get drunk,
Ibiza to party, Amsterdam to get high, before landing on their soon-to-be most unforgettable
trip idea, hiking the Kings Trail in Sweden where the Nordic gods are known for tormenting
mortal humans. Luke and Robert then head to a liquor store
to pick up some Vodka where they run into some junkies that end up killing Robert, after
he refused to give them his wedding ring. Luke hides in the back of the store when all
this goes down, to be forever stricken with survivors guilt from the incident, even though
there’s nothing he could have done, Luke isn’t Michael Jai White. The thugs had knives and bats and would have
killed him too. But that doesn’t ease his burden. Flash forward and Luke emerges from a tent
on the side of a mountain with his 4 friends, minus Robert of course. They decided to hike the trail in remembrance
of Robert. They break camp and finally make it to the
summit, where they honor their fallen friend with some final words, swigs of booze from
a canteen, and a final libation, also known as pouring one out for their dead homie, also
known as a ritual. They spend the night at the summit, where
the air is heavy with thoughts of Robert. Hutch earnestly tells Luke that despite what
others may think, Rob’s death wasn’t Luke’s fault, but this falls on unbelieving ears. As they make their descent, Dom trips and
hurts his leg. Hutch and Luke both scoff at how Dom is being
over dramatic about his injury. This causes the crew to search for a quicker
way off the mountain than was originally planned. Hutch, the pathfinder of the group, sets them
on an uncharted, off-trail hike through a forest. This little shortcut would theoretically cut
their journey in half, do ‘em some good, and they’d be in a lodge with their feet
kicked up drinking some beers next to a warm fire. A real happily ever after fairy tale ending. But there’s an hour and twenty minutes left
in this horror movie, so it’s safe to say the shortcut won’t be doing them any good. Before too long, they walk past an eerie abandoned
van while cracking filthy jokes, while this is one of the movie's earliest warning signs,
the mood is still light. It’s not until they stumble into an elk
strewn and hung from the trees with its intestines gutted, freshly dripping blood that they realize
they may be in danger. Unfortunately for this group of friends, this
is what you might call, strong foreshadowing. They wrongly mistake this for a deleted scene
from Planet Earth and venture on. A thunderstorm erupts and forces them to find
shelter, and what better place to shelter than an abandoned cabin in the woods. Better than a tent I suppose. While most of them unpack and settle in, Phil
goes to check out the attic for firewood. He does find some, but it’s stacked in the
quite unsettling shape of a headless torso with antlers for arms, an effigy of sorts. They decide to use other things for firewood
while discussing what the thing in their attic is before getting the worst sleep of their
lives. Luke wakes up to a nightmare where he’s
back in the convenience store, except it’s foresty, it’s very trippy. He walks up to grab the same bottle of vodka
he did when Robert was killed, then he gets metaphysically hooved in the chest by something,
leaving a bloody wound. His nightmare crashes back into reality when
the shelf of vodka seemingly gets ripped away from him and disappears, with an invisible
monster running back into the forest. This wasn’t solely a hallucination, as the
bloody injury is still there when he wakes up. Luke returns to the cabin and finds Hutch
wetting his bed, Dom crying in the corner, and Phil naked and praying to his Tinder date. Now, it’s a bit unrealistic to assume it’s
a coincidence that all 4 of them had devastating night terrors where 2 of them did some form
of sleepwalking. Something is toying with them, testing them,
sizing them up. They leave the cabin in the morning to find
that the trees have symbols carved into them. It’s not clear if those symbols were there
before the group walked into the cabin, but previously when look was shining his flashlight
out there at night we see possibly the same trees that are untouched. They figure the symbols are warnings. These symbols are most likely Elder Futhark
runes from the 2nd to the 8th centuries. The symbols translate roughly to the estate
of a giant dangerous elk who provides liberation and new life from hardship. At least that’s my interpretation from briefly
studying ancient runes on Wikipedia. Dom, freaked out as he is, marches off on
a path to civilization, or so he thinks, despite Hutch’s valid concerns that they have no
idea where it leads. After some hours of getting nowhere, Luke
decides to run to the top of the ridge to get a better view. He crests the hill only to see more of the
infinite forest, and one of the creepiest, spine-shivering moments of his life so far. Luke locks up when he sees something that
looks like a hand grasping a tree, but it could just be part of the tree, until the
thing that looks like a hand moves. He hightails it back to the group to tell
them what he saw. Dom continues to lose his shit, dismissing
and denying that Luke actually saw anything up there. The tension between the two culminates when
Luke says that we wouldn’t be in this haunted forest if Dom hadn’t screwed his knee. Dom retaliates with a mic dropping bomb, saying
that we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you, basically telling Luke that because
he was a coward and let his friend get killed, they were hiking this mountain in his honor,
where they are now faced with an impending doom. Man, camping trips can really put a strain
on friendships. Their internal feud is quickly overshadowed
by them stumbling across some fabric on the ground. They pull it out of the ground to realize
that it’s a tent, with boots, gear, a wallet and credit card all abandoned. The wallet contains a picture of a family,
and the credit card holder is Anna Eriksen, expiring in 1984. Given everything the crew has been through
up to this point, it’s hard to take this as anything but a terrible sign of what might
happen to them. Hutch continues to be the strongest leader
of the group, using logic, compasses, and calming the group by saying that they will
get found. Hutch’s words and hope are quickly extinguished
when Dom mentions that it’s getting dark again. It’s pretty apparent that the night is when
things turn bad. Cut to night, they’ve pitched tents and
Hutch sizes up the group's health. Dom’s knee is torn up, Phil is more mentally
weakened, and Hutch tells Luke that he should take the compass, head South-West and try
to make a break for civilization and bring back help while he stays with them. Hutch has this sort of, thousand yard stare
thing going, like his mind is trying to find a way out of this predicament. While he was spreading hope earlier, deep
down, he knows their situation is dire. Considering he’s the most experienced hiker
in the group, this is unnerving. They all get tucked into their tents for the
night, and right when Luke goes for a midnight pop-tart snack, the forest comes alive. I can’t imagine how vulnerable it must feel
being in a tiny tent, with a thin piece of fabric between you and a monster creeping
through the woods just outside. Luke draws down the loudest zipper mankind
has created, and most likely shit himself when he sees three shadowy figures in the
forest, staring at him from the darkness. It’s a PTSD trip like the one he had when
he was hit in the chest, except in this nightmare, the mugger eerily makes eye contact with Luke,
mocking him as a coward, before the forest erupts into branches breaking and trees moving
around his tent. We get a jarring moment where Luke witnesses
Hutch’s tent being ripped up from the ground and sucked into the trees, where he then wakes
up to Phil screaming and Hutch’s bloody tent torn open, and Hutch missing. Luke’s nightmares and reality don’t appear
to be two separate things. We then hear Hutch yelping in severe pain
from deep in the forest. The remaining three friends courageously attempt
a rescue, but as we all know, Hutch is pretty much a goner. At dawn, the search continues, where they
stumble across their worst fears. Hutch, like the elk from earlier, is found
gutted, hanging from the trees. It’s an incredibly gruesome sight, and this
is the exact moment when shit got real for the group. The hope of making it back in one piece is
irreversibly over. This is the moment where their lives were
permanently changed forever, or at least until they get hung from the trees too. This is also a huge blow because Hutch was
the one leading them out of this mess, this most likely isn’t a coincidence either. Phil says something interesting. He thinks the monster put Hutch’s corpse
on this path because it knew they were coming this way. Dom yet again loses his shit in denial, claiming
that it was pagan hillbillies that did this. Luke steps into Hutch’s bloody shoes as
the fearless leader of the group, affirming that they are going to get out of the forest
alive. I don’t think any of them actually believed
it though. They find footprints leading somewhere, but
they smartly avoid following them, choosing instead to go South-West as planned. As they ascend the ridge, we see the monster,
perfectly camouflaged in the background. One could speculate that the footprints were
incredibly obvious, and with the monster watching from a distance, this might have been some
sort of trap. While Dom is panicky and hot-headed, Phil
is something else. He looks pale and sickly, and it is deeply
disturbed and mentally unstable. Stating that the monster got inside his head,
made him pray to it, and that he can’t get it out. I’m starting to wonder how they thought
they could make it out of the forest in less than one day. Even with all the events that have unfolded,
it seems they should be close. Oh yep, they are close, just hours away, which
might as well be a thousand miles considering night is now falling upon them. Let’s just say, it’s about to get bumpy. And Phil got rekted before the sun completely
went down. At least he got the famous last words in,
“I think I heard something,” before being dragged off screen to be slaughtered. Yes Phil, that was the sound of a giant forest
monster lurking behind you. Luke springs into action, and with immense
athleticism, manages to run into a tree and knock himself out, where he then wakes up
at the familiar convenience store. Only this time, instead of the mugger calling
him a coward, Robert tells Luke that he can’t run. To which then, Luke proceeds to get up and
run. Just like at the cabin, and the tent, the
monster is communicating with Luke through the hallucinations. Luke finds Dom and they both cuddle up next
to a tree, while Dom cries on Luke's shoulder and Luke says he’ll never leave Dom under
a moonlit night sky. On three they make a run for the treeline,
but end up on a firelit path leading to either civilization or pagan hillbillies. Considering the monster is right behind them,
they take the risk and follow the path. Just before they bolt, the flashlight illuminates
Phils lifeless body, hanging from a tree. In sick irony, Phil saying that the monster
put Hutch’s body in their path so they would find it was exactly what happened to Phil. The monster is intelligently directing them,
and placing their friends dead bodies in their path for them to see. As soon as Dom and Luke bust into the nearest
cabin, they quickly realize it was a mistake, as the occupants aren’t alarmed at the situation,
it was almost as if they’d been expecting the duo to show up. Luke also see’s that they are praying to
a stone carved with the representation of the Norse god Loki. The stone is called the Loki stone, and depicts
Loki chained up. Probably not a good sign. It’s confirmed that there will be no hospitality
given here as they get face stomped into unconsciousness. They wake up in shackles with ritualistic
chants roaring above them, people erecting human-sized crosses, and a creepy old lady
feeding them water. Not exactly a 5-star bed and breakfast. The creepy old lady reveals she is injured
in the same way Luke is. At this point it’s clear that this injury
is a mark of ritualistic importance. Unfortunately for Dom, he doesn’t have the
mark, and is dragged into the attic to be blessed by prayers in preparation for his
sacrifice. Yah, I don’t think they were building a
Wendy’s outside after all. The cult brings Dom back inside so he can
have one last chat with Luke before this evening’s show. He reveals that earlier in the cabin, when
Hutch was alive and pissing himself and he was in the corner crying and screaming the
name Gayle, that his nightmare was the future prediction that he would end up here, being
sacrificed to the monster. It brings a sense of dread and inevitability
to the situation, which Dom obviously realizes by saying that he will die here. The monster literally forecasted everything
that happened to the group. It’s placement of Hutch and Phil’s corpses
was no coincidence. It herded them to the cult. Dom’s chilling final request is that Luke
burns the place to the ground, that he never stops, that he lives on as best he can, and
to tell his wife he did what he could to get back to her. The cult marches Dom out to be sacrificed,
where numerous other corpses are hanging from the tree’s in full view. The sacrificial cross is actually in the shape
as one of the symbols they saw earlier, which translates to elk. In an attempt to rescue Dom, Luke breaks his
thumb in order to slip out of his shackles, he gets out of one, but cant get his other
hand free. I’m not sure Luke could have done much if
he did get free though. This is an important moment for Luke, as he
was now ready to take personal injury while fighting for his friends. Despite his best efforts, he’s too late. As was foretold in the nightmare, Gayle emerged
from the woods. Only we know now that the monster has some
form of telepathic abilities, and is assuming the figure of Dom’s wife, before dragging
him into the forest to be hung from the tree’s. We do get a good look at the monster’s face
hole, and it’s pretty clear this is nothing humans have encountered before. Why hang the bodies from the trees though,
what significance does that have. It may be some sort of nod to other Norse
mythology where the god Odin was said to gain knowledge and power by sacrificially impaling
and hanging himself on a tree. Why did the monster need the cult to sacrifice
Dom instead of hunting him like Hutch and Phil? Considering all the ritualistic worshiping,
it appears to be more of the ego thing the monster has. Killing all the friends in the woods with
nobody to see is like a basketball team playing with nobody in the stands. It’s also a show of power to the cult, a
warning. Why did the monster appear as Gayle? It may be it’s ego and need to be revered
and worshiped that caused the monster to appear as Gayle when killing Dom. Dom revered Gayle and the monster wanted to
find someone to look at it like how Dom looks at Gayle. Another answer is that the monster despises
people with good lives, as it cannot as easily convert them to a worshiper. It torments Dom by first appearing as Gayle,
before revealing it’s true grotesque nature as it kills him. Why did the monster choose Dom to sacrifice,
and not the others? Possibly because Dom is wounded, and is easier
for the cult to control. I don’t think the cult had the capacity
to detain all four friends at once. They’d pose too much of a danger. It killed off the stronger and healthier of
the friends first. Dom, with his injured leg was an easier catch
for the cult. A younger woman enters the cabin, who appears
to be the little girl from the picture in the wallet at the abandoned tent the group
found earlier. Luke asks if they took Dom’s body down from
the trees, to which she replies, we don’t move the bodies. She tells Luke that the monster is an ancient
nordic god named Moder, and is the slightly less charming offspring of Tom Hiddleston. The cult worships Moder, and in return it
provides them with protection and everlasting life without pain, and if that sounds too
good to be true, it’s because it is. But it’s not like you have a door number
2, if you don’t worship it, you’ll end up like Hutch, Phil, Dom, and countless others. We again see that this lady bears the mark
that Luke has. When asked, why him, she responds that she
believes it is because his pain is great. It’s now that we’re clued in that the
god marks those it wants as worshippers, selecting only those with immense emotional baggage. This is another clue that this woman is the
little girl from the picture, as she is distant and unsmiling while her family is happy and
hugging each other, suggesting that she also carries great pain. The mark is over the heart, as this is traditionally
where deep emotional pain is said to be felt. Back in the cabin where all the friends had
nightmares, these nightmares were most likely caused by Moder gripping their hearts and
feeling out which one of them it would choose. Dom was screaming for Gayle, possibly suggesting
that he missed her and regretted not spending more time with her. Phil was praying to the effigy, possibly suggesting
that he had some unresolved issues with a commitment to a religion or higher power. Hutch losing his bowels may suggest that his
pain was in losing control, as he was the leader who seemingly always had a handle on
the group, and was constantly trying to keep them on path. Obviously Luke, carrying the guilt from Rob's
death at the liquor store, was the one whose heart the monster gripped the hardest. The monster clearly herded Luke to the cult
instead of killing him, which it had plenty of opportunities to do earlier, so that he
could become a worshiper of it. Now, our boy Luke has had some character development
over the past hour and 20 minutes, he’s not about to take any more shit from Loki’s
ugly ass son. He grabs a torch and heads upstairs to check
out the congregation. Instead of opening the door to find Benny
Hinn, Luke discovers probably the creepiest thing we’ve seen yet. The worshipers are all mummified remains of
elder cult members. He has some serious cojones for walking into
that room, I'd have tossed the torch in and noped out of there. Remember when I said everlasting life was
too good to be true, yah, this is Moders gift in all its glory. It’s the hellacious side of everlasting
life, as they aged but didn’t die, and since their mummified remains can’t ever leave,
they are stuck in that attic, forced to worship Moder forever, well until Luke mercy kills
them by lighting them all on fire, ultimately living up to his promise to Dom. Badass Luke absolutely rocks granny with a
straight right jab, then grabs a german kar98k bolt action rifle and a couple rounds of 8mm
ammo. On a side note, this could be a subtle indication
that this monster god has been abducting hikers since before 1935. I mean obviously Moder’s been around for
awhile since he’s an ancient god, but I think it’s worth pointing out. Moder returns from the woods, pissed off at
his beautiful church being burned down. Luke blasts the creepy bald guy with his newfound
rifle, then akimbos the rifle and an axe as he turns around to see Moder in the doorway,
who drops the super dead eyes gouged out blonde woman to the ground as a kind of, see what
you caused type of taunt. Earlier the blonde woman looked up at Moder
and whispered a reply to it, we don’t know what she said, but I think fair to say that
Moder is mad and punishing it’s worshipers for allowing Luke to burn down the elders. Luke busts out the backdoor and into the woods
while Moder picks up dead Annie, presumably to hang her from the trees. He fires the rifle at the monster with his
last remaining round. We don’t really know if Luke hit Moder with
the bullet, but Moder seems pretty unphased. Moder is what you might consider to be, big
game, which means one 8mm round won’t do the trick anyway. Realizing this, Luke takes off for the treeline
with the displeased monster chasing him down. That damn convenience store shows up again,
meaning that he definitely did not lose Moder in the woods. He then gets bucked to the ground by the elk
god, and now has Luke in his tiny hand’s grasp. Just when you think Lukes about to become
a tree ornament, Moder tosses him on the ground and starts flexing on him, establishing its
dominance like a gorilla beating its chest. As soon as Luke stands up in defiance, Moder
quickly shoves him back down into the kneeling position. Luke hallucinates one last time, and see’s
Robert on the ground next to him, Robert turns to look at him, almost as a suggestion from
Moder that he needs to cowardly submit to Moder like he submitted to the muggers. It might not be those with great pain that
the god chooses for worshipers, but instead it chooses those who are most likely to submit
to it. We’re led to believe it chooses the biggest
cowards. I have some problems with this though, as
after Hutch is killed it’s clear that Luke ain’t gonna be nobody's bitch, he’s done
being a coward and he assumed the stronger leader role, while Phil showed much less mental
resolve and arguably would be an easier target. Though Phil’s golden ticket may have been
revoked because of his disrespect at the cabin earlier. I don’t know though, earlier when they saw
the footprints leading presumably to the cult camp, Phil was still alive. Moder may have actually wanted Phil too, but
since they take the bait, it decided to kill him. The blonde lady did mention that Moder will
take away their pain, so Luke’s immense guilt is what might make him the target. In order for Moder to take away someone’s
pain as a motivation to become a worshiper, that person has to have pain to begin with. It’s apparent now that Moder’s main motivation
is to satisfy it’s ego by building a group of followers to worship it, much like an instagram
ho. This is also maybe why it made Phil strip
down naked and beg for his life to the headless antler-hand effigy for disrespecting it by
saying "I'll pay a thousand to whoever shacks up with the thing tonight." Luke says fuck that noise, picks up the axe
laying beside him that Moder seemed to forget about, and thrusts it into the monsters head,
drawing the blood of the ancient god creature. Luke makes it to the treeline, where the forest
seems to have some sort of electric shock collar fencing that Moder can’t go beyond. It could also be interpreted that the monster
is also a bit of a coward and all it’s shenanigans were a defensive projection of it’s own
cowardice as it hides in the forest and doesn’t want to be seen in the open. Luke is barefoot and out of breath, he hasn't
had time to grieve his dead friends. He's face to face with a mythical monster. It roars in anger, Luke, too stricken to feel
fear of death screams back in sadness and defiance. He's no longer a coward, but what does it
matter when all his friends were murdered. How can he even begin to explain or cope with
what he has endured. The movie leaves Luke to make his solitary
journey back home so he can be imprisoned as he’s painted as a mentally unstable PTSD
afflicted person who lost his mind and murdered his friends in the forest. What, did you think we’d really believe
an ancient monster god killed them? What he should have done, is kept the axe
he used to draw the god’s blood, and used that as biological evidence of an unworldly
creature that attacked them. If you want to know more about how to beat
Moder, I'll have a video on that as well. Anyways, this movie had more depth and raised
more questions than I expected, so let me know what you guys thought of it! Thanks for watching!
