A quintet of physicians played by a motley assortment of middle-aged actors with varying degrees of prestige -- the inestimable, slightly out of his element, but still very fine Hal Holbrook, unsung Canadian B-movie favorite Lawrence ("Scanners," "Happy Birthday to Me") Dane, Robin Gammel, Ken James and Gary ("Muder by Phone") Reineke -- go hiking into "The Cauldron of the Moon," a beauteous, but remote Ontario, Canada wilderness area. The five M.D.s are soon stuck in the woods and have their very lives jeopardized when a hulking, vengeful, deranged hayseed (the hairy, enormous and extremely imposing Michael Zeroy) steals their boots, thereby rendering them helpless and vulnerable. Moreover, the docs are placed in a richly ironic position that's in striking contrast with their profession: Instead of saving lives they now have to take them so they can continue living.
Peter Carter's rather erratic direction of this low-budget Canadian "Deliverance" variant runs hot and cold throughout: the opening third suffers from draggy pacing and an overabundance of tedious talk, but a goodly amount of nerve-jangling suspense is expertly developed and sustained, the final confrontation between the beleaguered doctors and the berserk backwoods nutjobs qualifies as the kind of potently visceral gut-tearing stuff the worst nightmares stem from, and the shockingly sudden outbursts of brutal violence posses a certain raw, almost primal power (the scene where Holbrook self-cauterizes a gushing, potentially fatal femoral artery wound with some gunpowder and a match -- ouch! -- is sure to make you wince). The uniformly stand-out acting most definitely carries the day as well, with particularly praiseworthy turns by a game, unexpectedly fit'n'physical Holbrook and the grossly underrated Dane. Although it's pretty rough around the edges and far from perfect, "Rituals" nonetheless still rates as a gritty, absorbing and harrowing entry in the once prospering, now sadly defunct "Deliverance"-inspired "Hey Bubba, let's go kill us some pesky cityfolk" action/survivalist evil hillbilly movie sub-genre.
