Is The Ritual by Adam Nevill worth reading?

No.

Incredibly, the movie was better than the book.

*Spoilers*

I actually enjoyed The Ritual (movie). It’s basically about a giant 100000 year old moose god who stalks and terrorizes four men through the woods. However, the movie was not without its faults, and I figured I was in for a real treat when I picked up the book.

Alas! The The Ritual by Adam Nevill is even more poorly thought out than the movie.

The first half of the book is decent. Much in the same way the first half of the movie is decent. That said, the movie greatly improves upon the reason for their backpacking excursion. In the book, Luke is too broke (AND SINGLE) to do anything else.

In the movie their 5th wheel Rob suggests going camping only for everyone to be like, “literally why would we do that?” Then, Rob gets killed while buying beer as SINGLE, COWARDLY Luke hides and watches him die. So, they take the trip in his honor.

In the book there is no Rob.

Dom, Phil, Luke, and Hutch go on this trip because Luke is SINGLE and POOR (AND SINGLE). Also, they hate each other (and their wives EXCEPT SINGLE BROKE LUKE WHO DOES NOT HAVE A WIFE but he did sleep with Phil’s gold digger wife. Despite Phil’s supposed gold, he apparently cannot afford to buy Luke a plane ticket or cover his stay at a hotel). Furthermore, Luke hates every women he’s dated (he probably hates women people in general) and he also hates fat people and his friends.

All four of them seem to hate the outdoors except maybe Hutch. How this was the cheapest thing they could come up with is beyond me. I don’t know what world they live in where backpacking is cheap, but it’s Europe and maybe all of them already owned backpacking gear? But like why not just do something else together that doesn’t require a lot of money? Or wait until Luke saves up enough money to go on a trip they’d all enjoy?

Because this is horror, things go awry as soon as they start backpacking. Phil and Dom get injured, and it’s because they are fatty fat fats. In fact, all of them seem to be out of shape and ill-equipped for a trip like this except maybe Hutch and maybe single, poor Luke.

Instead of doing what anyone with experience in the woods would do after Dom-Phil get injured, which is turn around or get help, they take a shortcut through the woods none of them are familiar with. *inserts something about toxic masculinity here.*

Predictably, they get lost. Something creepy and weird happens, they crash out and start fighting among themselves, rinse, repeat. Luke stays in character, hating on everything including himself.

After like the fifth creepy thing and fight I was like, “someone or something please kill one of these men,” because the amount of wangsting was agitating. Also, single and broke Luke is marked by the moose god for unknown reasons, but definitely not because he’s a single, broke loser.

The forest monster aptly realizes Hutch is the only one who can read a compass or map, and kills him first ensuring the others will never find their way out of the woods. Phil is killed next, probably because he is fat.

Overall, I enjoyed the first half of the book.

The second half of the book was a waste of my time and a test of my patience. Dom and Luke get kidnapped by crazies. The crazies are a black metal satanist band of children (Loki, Fenris, Surtr) being watched by an goat witch old woman. They are part of the moose god’s cult aka Moder’s brood (with Moder being the moose god), and we are subjected to page after page about Black Metal and Christianity, which neither I nor Luke cared about. The latter because he is being tortured.

In the midst of Luke’s torture, the author takes a moment to remind us that Luke hates women and fat people, telling us Surtr, the only female in this book with any meaningful dialogue, is fat and her vagina smells bad. Surtr is also a child, but I wouldn’t blame you if you mistook her for a rabies plagued bobcat. The way she acts and talks in comparison to Loki (who is handsome) and Fenris (who is there) makes zero sense. Like how are the two of them normal and she’s insane?

Dom is killed, leaving broke and single Luke (the reason they’re on this trip) as the only one alive. Luckily, plot armor in the form of Moder clocking him as a single, broke loser has kept him alive thus far. *inserts torture porn* which like 100 pages could’ve been cut from this book with no loss to the plot.

Admittedly, my dislike of the second half probably has to do with the fact the book no longer felt like a folk horror in the woods. The satanic child cult to a 548573478 year old moose god bastard son of Loki could’ve been interesting, but the execution of it was almost as dumb as the cult in the movie.

While I get what the author was doing here, the tonal shift from ancient forest deities, burial sites, skulls, and abandoned houses to a heavy metal band wearing belts in a modern house and fleeing in a truck just ruined the vibe. Add the amount of torture porn in the latter half and this just felt like a weirdly written nightmare. By the time it was time for Luke to die I was ready for him to die if for no other reason than to put us both out of our misery.

Anyway, Luke doesn’t die.

He escapes after killing most of the cult/ kids because for some reason the old woman cannot just summon Moder to kill them but needs Luke to do so first?

Luke realizes that while his life sucks, he could be dead like his friends. Frankly, I’d rather be a corpse in the Swedish wilderness than return to work but Luke doesn’t have a real career/job so I guess he can’t relate.

Fin.

The ending of The Ritual was unsatisfying. For all the despondent angsting Luke does in the latter half of the book about feeling alone and thinking about his friends, the book ends with Luke being like, “actually humans don’t matter at all and London sucks.”

The Ritual Rating: 5.5/10