Italy/USA. 2023.
Crew
Director – George Gallo, Screenplay – Robert T. Bowersox, Francesco Cinquemani, Ferdinando Dell’Omo, Giorgio Iannone, Luca Giliberto & Jennifer Lemmon, Story – Francesco Cinquemani, Giorgio Iannone & Joe Lemmon, Producers – Monika Bacardi, Jeff Bowler, Andrea Iervolino, Joe Lemmon & Bret Saxon, Photography – Andrzej Sekula, Music – Tom Russbueldt, Visual Effects – Blackstone Studio (Supervisor – Marco Tomassetti), Special Effects Supervisor – Chris Bailey, Production Design – Francesco Cotone, Markos Keyto & Joe Lemmon. Production Company – Iervolino & Lady Bacardi Entertainment/Black Diamond Films/March On Productions/Wonderfilm/Eyevox Entertainment/Zian Films.
Cast
Cole Hauser (Detective Lucas Boyd), Morgan Freeman (Dr Mackles), Vernon Davis (Randoku), Murielle Hilaire (Detective Maria Kersch), Giuseppe Zeno (Inspector Mario Lavazzi), Brian Kurlander (Shelby Farmer), Peter Stormare (Captain Marchand), Bill Luckett (Medical Examiner), Talia Asseraf (Terry)
Plot
Lucas Boyd, a police detective in Clinton, Mississippi, is haunted by the death of his daughter. He is pulled in by internal affairs over his deliberate shooting of a man who has abducted an underage girl, but is cleared of charges. He and his partner Maria Kersch investigate what appear to be a series of ritual killings around the city. Boyd goes to consult Dr Mackles, an expert in African studies, about some of the ritual herbs found at the scene. Mackles proves fearful but Boyd persuades him to help. Mackles reveals that they are facing a sangoma, an African witch doctor, who gains his power from the slaughter of innocents. In this case, the sangoma Randoku has been summoned by the businessman Shelby Farmer. As Randoku builds his power, Boyd and Maria try to stop his killings.
The Ritual Killer falls into the type of film they don’t make anymore – the Serial Killer Thriller. This was all the rage after The Silence of the Lambs (1991) where regular Police Procedural plots were beefed up with the importation of forensic psychology, featuring detectives tracing genius killers by examining the minutiae of behavioural patterns. There were a host of copycats for several years after but the genre largely died away around 2004, although still can be found in tv shows like Criminal Minds (2005- ).
One of the biggest successes to come out following The Silence of the Lambs was Se7en (1995), which had detectives Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman pursuing Kevin Spacey as a serial killer who used a Seven Deadly Sins motif. The shadow of Se7en hangs over The Ritual Killer, most notedly in the casting of Morgan Freeman who plays a similar character armed with arcane knowledge of religious traditions who accompanies a younger detective as they investigate a religiously inspired ritual killer. (The main difference is that Freeman is not playing a detective here but an academic). Freeman also played James Patterson’s profiler Alex Cross in two films Kiss the Girls (1997) and Along Came a Spider (2001). The other possible source of inspiration is The Believers (1987), which had a similar police procedural plot about detectives tracing ritual Santeria practitioners who were working on behalf of powerful business elites.
I was looking forward to sitting down to a good solid serial killer thriller. Unfortunately, The Ritual Killer starts to fall down badly. One of the major problems is the casting. Back in 1995, a 58-year old Freeman seemed a source of sagacious wisdom and fitted the role perfectly. However, by 2023, Freeman is an old man of 85. To put it bluntly, when he appears on screen, he no longer seems a fierce intellect but frail and aged.
There is also Cole Hauser. In the early 2000s, Hauser seemed a handsome, good-looking actor on the rise in films like Pitch Black (2000), Hart’s War (2002), Tears of the Sun (2003), The Cave (2005), even one of the Fast and the Furious sequels. Here at age 48 he looks no longer handsome but beefy. Indeed, with his hair dyed black, I almost thought I was watching late stage Steven Seagal – all that seems missing is the ponytail. Not to mention, Hauser’s face looks ruddy as though he is suffering from blood pressure problems.
The film fails to work much on a plot level. It is an Italian co-production, which seems to necessitate that some scenes be filmed in Rome (where the streets are shot and lit with in some undeniably beautiful ways). However, the need to cut back to Italian detective Giuseppe Zeno every so often distorts and adds something superfluous to a story that had no real need to venture beyond Mississippi. There are no real twists and turns that keep you pinned to the script with the exception of a major one near the end, while the film does go out with a dark twist that almost makes things worthwhile.
George Gallo has had a career as a screenwriter since the 1980s, delivering the scripts for films such as Wise Guys (1986), Midnight Run (1988), Bad Boys (1995) and The Whole Ten Yards (2010), among others. Gallo made his directing/writing debut with 29th Street (1991) and has directed various other films, most of which fall into the crime genre with the likes of Trapped in Paradise (1994), Double Take (2001), My Mom’s New Boyfriend (2008), Middle Men (2009), Columbus Circle (2012), The Comeback Trail (2020) and Vanquish (2021).
Trailer here