Mark Reviews Movies: THE RITUAL KILLER

The Ritual Killer, Screen Media Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 9, 2023

The entire premise of The Ritual Killer, which revolves around an African man ritualistically slaughtering children, is an outright prejudiced and borderline hateful one, and the only thing that prevents director George Gallo's movie from crossing that line is its general incompetence as a thriller. It's a terrible movie either way, especially when one considers that it's only saving grace might be the fact that there's a bit of hesitation in calling it overtly racist.

If it's not, the movie is pretty damn close, that's for sure. We meet Detective Lucas Boyd (Cole Hauser, trying to play cool but coming across as a man in need of a good nap), a cop in a small town or a big city depending on the whims of the Gallo and his location scout. When the mutilated body of a teenage girl is found, Boyd goes lukewarm on the trail of the killer.

This is such a simple plot that it's almost impressive how the somehow multi-writer screenplay seems incapable of maintaining a basic sense of focus. Boyd quickly determines that the first murder and another involving an even younger kid are somehow connected to African religious practices, so he enlists the aid of Dr. Mackles (Morgan Freeman), a professor of African Studies at a nearby university.

Mackles is hesitant at first, but he eventually points Boyd in the direction of a customary practice of medicine and some powerful people who believe the practice could give them even more power. One can almost sense the screenwriters trying to deflect from the most obvious criticism of this material by making the killer a pawn of others. It still feels like a case of maybe rethinking the entire notion if such a move seems like a necessity to evade that critique.

The plot also follows the killer (played by Vernon Davis) as he hunts and gets orders from his wealthy handlers, as well as a police detective (played by Giuseppe Zeno) in Rome. He's a useless character in such a dead-end subplot that one suspects the through line exists as little more than excuse for an Italian vacation for some members of the crew. Some additional quirks include a clearly embarrassed Peter Stormare as Boyd's boss, a game of cat-and-mouse in an abandoned building that's so shakily staged we might start to believe the murderer has magical teleportation abilities, and a series of flashbacks to Boyd's tragic past that only further convince us that Hauser appears just as sleepy while playing haunted.

Put simply, The Ritual Killer is offensive as a piece of storytelling. As an attempt at filmmaking, it's on that same level.

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