The Ritual (2025) Blu-ray

Al Pacino is as iconic and accomplished as any actor alive today, which makes it both surprising and disheartening to find him in what appears to be a run-of-the-mill exorcism movie. At one time, a movie dealing with demonic possession was shocking, must-see entertainment. That time was over half a century ago, when The Exorcist did blockbuster numbers at drew a host of Academy Award nominations. No other film tackling the same subject matter has ever had the same impact, but that hasn’t stopped filmmakers from trying. All the time.

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Blu-ray · DVD · Prime Video

The franchise born out of William Friedkin’s 1973 hit has consisted of one generally well-regarded sequel (1990’s The Exorcist III) and a number of creative and commercial disappointments, most recently in 2023’s fizzled requel The Exorcist: Requel. That franchise is but the starting point for the prolific horror subgenre that has given us not one but two unrelated Russell Crowe movies in the past two years.

You hope Pacino’s presence means an effort above the subgenre’s low standard, but The Ritual is every bit as routine and forgettable as its generic title and marketing campaign suggest. The actor’s involvement here is a head-scratcher. The closest thing to a horror movie he’s made prior to this was The Devil’s Advocate nearly thirty years ago and this time out, he’s collaborating with filmmakers green enough not to have Wikipedia pages.

Based on a sketchily documented true story, The Ritual finds troubled young woman Emma Schmidt (Abigail Cowen) turning to St. Joseph’s, a Catholic church in Earling, Iowa in 1928 for an exorcism. The sacrament is to be performed by Capuchin priest Theophilus Riesinger (Pacino), though our access point is Father Joseph Steiger (Dan Stevens), the church’s pastor currently mourning the death of his brother.

Must I even tell you that the two priests encounter some wild, otherworldly phenomena while trying to help Emma, after the medical profession could not? Lights flicker. Injuries occur. Latin flows. Doubts emerge.

In watching this, you keep trying to figure out what it was that interested Pacino in this tale and this retelling of it. An answer proves elusive, as only someone who hasn’t seen a single other exorcism movie would find this special or stirring. Maybe that describes Pacino, whose interest in Shakespeare is as well-documented as his legacy of crime dramas.

Pacino turned eighty-five this year and while he’s never recaptured the torrent of dramatic highs he experienced in the ’70s, he’s seemed aware of his legacy in recent years by finally collaborating with such legends as Martin Scorsese (The Irishman), Quentin Tarantino (Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood), and Ridley Scott (House of Gucci). He’s opened up about his need to take money jobs around the time he played himself in Adam Sandler’s widely reviled Jack and Jill (2011), something his candid 2024 autobiography suggested was behind him. Having seen his every film, it’s clear that he’s not always as discerning as a living legend could be.

While its budget has not been reported anywhere, The Ritual couldn’t have been a huge payday for the legend. Nor was it to be a huge payday for the financiers who backed the project. It grossed a measly $527 thousand in domestic theaters where it opened in 563 locations and dropped precipitously from there.

BLU-RAY DISC SPECIFICATIONS:
2.0:1 Widescreen
DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (English)
Subtitles: English for Hearing Impaired
Release Date: September 9, 2025
Single-sided, single-layered disc (BD-25)
Blue Keepcase

VIDEO and AUDIO

The Ritual employs an intermediate 2.0:1 widescreen ratio, which XYZ’s Blu-ray preserves. The shaky, handheld documentary-like photography contributes to the film’s generic feel as much as anything. The 5.1 DTS-HD master audio mix expectedly gives your home theater a little bit of a workout during its more tumultuous exorcism scenes.

BONUS FEATURES, MENUS, PACKAGING and DESIGN

The Ritual is joined by five bonus features on Blu-ray.

“The Making of The Ritual” (10:56) is a standard EPK-style piece in which everyone gushes over Pacino while showing genuine enthusiasm for the project. Bizarrely still using his accent from the film, Pacino himself has his brief, wacky remarks chopped up to a concerning extreme.

Three shorter, topical pieces — Keeping the Faith” (1:51), “The Script” (1:37), “Based on a True Story” (1:27) — all pull from the same source as the first featurette in increasingly choppy and dubious fashion.

Finally, “The Buzzfeed Interviews” (7:29) lets cast members who aren’t Al Pacino (Dan Stevens, Ashley Greene, and Abigail Cowen) promote the film in dramatic snippets surrounded by clips from the movie.

The menu loops a short, scored screen-filling montage of dramatic clips. No inserts accompany the disc; no digital copy is included with your purchase.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

If you share my belief that every Al Pacino performance warrants a view, then The Ritual should be on your radar, but it’s unfortunate that this lifeless exorcism picture never comes close to warranting or utilizing his talent. XYZ’s Blu-ray has a fine feature presentation and a decent handful of extras, but both of those are overshadowed by the film’s many dramatic shortcomings.

Buy The Ritual from Amazon.com:
Blu-ray · DVD · Prime Video