The Ritual Killer (2023) – Dead Boring

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 19th April
Seen: 9th September

I think it’s time to ask a very serious question… does Morgan Freeman owe someone money? Does the legendary five-time Oscar-nominated (and only one-time winner, somehow) who starred in such monster hits as The Shawshank Redemption and Bruce Almighty have a huge tax bill that he needs to pay off? It’s a question that feels like it needs to be asked because lately, it seems that every time he’s being seen on screen it’s in some low-budget piece of shit that shouldn’t exist, a piece of shit selling itself almost entirely on the fact that it stars Morgan Freeman. This is a man who deserves to only have to work when he wants to, when a project is good enough to be worthy of him… he shouldn’t have to take up a supporting role in The Ritual Killer to pay the bills!

The Ritual Killer is a substandard cop drama about embittered and out-of-control Detective Lucas Boyd (Cole Hauser) who, despite literally having just murdered a suspect and having a history of random acts of violence, is in charge of an investigation into a series of ritual killings (hence the title The Ritual Killer, you can see how original this thing is going to be). At one of the crime scenes Detective Boyd gets the sense that these ritual killings have something to do with African cultural practices and so he goes to get help from Dr. Mackles (Morgan “I’m too good to be in this garbage” Freeman) who is an anthropologist who teaches classes on assorted cultures and thus can give details on the strange ritual murder practices. 

While they do this the Ritual Killer Randoku (Vernon Davis) just kind of runs around town killing completely random people for no reason, only doing the rituals on kids because it’s extra disturbing and can allow us to do a whole plot about how rich people are sacrificing small children in order to do some witchcraft… because that’s not at all going to be playing into the hands of annoying conspiracy theorists at all.

This “Film” was directed by George Gallo and if that name isn’t familiar to you that’s fine because he hasn’t directed anything worthy of note, but it’s fascinating that his last 4 films have all featured Morgan Freeman and the last two of them (The Comeback Trail and Vanquish) are films I actually shortlisted to be on the worst list of their respective years… this time it’s not even being shortlisted, it’s on the damn worst list because whatever connections have allowed Gallo to make films for 20 years must be good because this is one of the most abysmally assembled films that has been released in recent years.

Story wise The Ritual Killer is somehow basic but also so poorly told that it’s hard to keep up. Characters turn up that we’re clearly meant to care about in some way, but we’ve never heard of them before, so we can’t. Plotlines are told in whatever order they want, for example there are at least two scenes between our lead characters that feel like they’re meant to be introduction scenes and both of them are awful. Hell calling these things characters is a bit of a stretch because that implies they are interesting or consistent, they’re just figures that move through the scenes and do the bare minimum required to fit the scene that’s currently happening.

Whatever scene is currently happening is also just god-awful. If it’s not poorly acted by people who deliver their lines like they just learned them phonetically then it’s badly filmed and edited so that it’s impossible to get a sense of where anyone is which in turn removes any tension. Hell even if the scene looks good (and that’s rare) the dialogue is so awful that you would swear it was written by AI and even if the dialogue somehow manages to be passable the actors mumble so many of the lines that you can’t hear it. Every time that something happens that runs the risk of being interesting, The Ritual Killer finds a way to completely fuck it up in a way that makes the scene land somewhere between boring as sin or actually offensive.

The rituals at the heart of The Ritual Killer are all played out as part of an African medical practice known as Muti and to be more fair than this film deserves, if you look up Muti you will find stories of murder done as part of certain versions of Muti… It’s clear the writers just read the 2 paragraphs on Wikipedia that I did in order to understand if this was in any way a real thing, did no further research into it and then ran with it creating a main killer that dances along the line between racist and stupid, often being both at the same time. It’s honestly kind of painful to watch how often the main killer has the chance to do something interesting or terrifying but doesn’t because that would require effort.

While suffering through The Ritual Killer it’s hard not to see that they clearly are trying to do a spin on what worked so well back in the 90s with Se7en, from a killer doing a strange ritual to a well-meaning but impulsive cop who is accompanied by Morgan Freeman. Hell, you could almost guarantee that if they could’ve afforded Brad Pitt they would’ve cast him, but apparently, Mr. Pitt isn’t as desperate for work as Morgan Freeman. Catch is that Se7en was directed by David Fincher who is one of the greatest directors of all time, The Ritual Killer is directed by George Gallo who couldn’t direct traffic if his life depended on it. The tension that made Se7en such an undeniable classic thriller just isn’t here, neither is the brilliant cinematography or even the creative and shocking twist (this film does certainly have a twist ending, but it’s dumb. No spoilers but it’s the kind of dumb ending that thinks it’s doing something shocking but it’s honestly just dumb)

The Ritual Killer has nothing to offer anyone. It’s badly acted, poorly written, lazily filmed and haphazardly edited in service of a story that should be so easy to tell. There are half a dozen episodes of Law & Order (or any of its spinoffs) that tell this exact story except better and in under 40 minutes. It’s not scary, it’s not thrilling, it’s not even a little bit entertaining. It can’t even be bad in a way that’s still somewhat fun for the audience to watch because that would be asking too much. No, it’s just bad in a way that’s only made remarkable by the fact it somehow had the ability to get a living legend to be a major part of the film. There is nothing about this that’s worth your time, it has nothing to offer, so do not give it even a second because it doesn’t deserve that.