There’s an old saying: “If Morgan Freeman is in it, it must be good.” Well, let me introduce you to the exception. The Ritual Killer is an action-thriller that asks the important question: “How do we waste Morgan Freeman’s talent for 92 minutes?” The answer: Make him play an anthropology professor with a dark secret, give Cole Hauser an existential crisis with a badge, and throw in some ritualistic murders just to keep things edgy. It’s a film that desperately wants to be Se7en but ends up more like Law & Order: Mississippi Confusion Unit.
A Muti-Car Pileup
Once upon a time—August 2021, to be exact—someone thought, “What if we made a gritty crime thriller about African ritual murders, but we filmed it in Mississippi and cast Vernon Davis, an ex-NFL tight end, as the villain?” This brilliant idea snowballed into what was initially titled Muti, a reference to the South African ritual involving medicinal murder (yes, you read that right). The film’s script had more fingerprints on it than a crime scene, with no fewer than seven writers credited, including Bob Bowersox, Jennifer Lemmon, and Giorgia Iannone. That’s right: seven people labored over this script, and somehow it still plays like something ChatGPT would generate on Ambien.
Filming kicked off in Jackson, Mississippi, because when you think ritualistic tribal murders, you obviously think of the deep South. To add an exotic flair, parts of the film were also shot in Rome, Italy—because if there’s anything that screams African mysticism, it’s some b-roll of the Colosseum. By September 2021, Redbox Entertainment (yes, that Redbox) picked up distribution rights, which should have been the first warning sign. If your movie is a Redbox Exclusive, it’s basically the cinematic equivalent of getting invited to a party via a forwarded email.
More Confused Than a Tourist with a Bad Map
The film is anchored (if you can call it that) by Morgan Freeman as Dr. Mackles, a professor who seems like he should be narrating something on the Discovery Channel, not shuffling through this mess. Freeman, an actor who could make reading a grocery list sound like Shakespeare, spends most of the film sitting in a dimly lit office, exuding an aura of “I’m here for the paycheck.” Meanwhile, Cole Hauser plays Detective Lucas Boyd, a man haunted by the twin tragedies of his daughter’s death and his wife’s suicide. He copes with this the way most brooding detectives do: by aggressively existing in trench coats and mumbling about justice.
The villain, Randoku (Vernon Davis), is a practitioner of Muti who commits murders in increasingly theatrical ways, which might have been unsettling if the film had any sense of pacing. Instead, the plot unfolds like a criminal procedural written by someone who skimmed a Wikipedia page about African folklore and thought, This’ll do.Hauser’s character teams up with Freeman’s Mackles to track Randoku down, leading to revelations that are neither shocking nor particularly coherent. If you’ve seen one serial killer thriller, you’ve seen this one—except this one also features Peter Stormare showing up just long enough to make you wonder if he lost a bet.
A Ritual Killing of Audience Expectations
When the film was finally unleashed on March 10, 2023, audiences were not impressed. Critics gave it a 9% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which is about as close as you can get to a cinematic restraining order. The film’s biggest crime wasn’t even its over-reliance on tropes—it was that it took itself way too seriously. Had The Ritual Killer leaned into its absurdity, it might have reached the “so bad it’s good” pantheon. Instead, it just felt like watching a community theater production of True Detective where half the actors are still reading their lines off a clipboard.
If The Ritual Killer has a legacy, it’s that it proves even Morgan Freeman can’t save everything. It also serves as a cautionary tale: just because you can make a crime thriller about Muti doesn’t mean you should. Maybe next time, they’ll let Redbox stick to what it does best—stocking DVDs of Taken 3 in gas stations.
If You Must Watch, Keep the Redbox Rental Receipt
So here we are, staring at the cinematic equivalent of an undercooked steak—technically meat, technically edible, but mostly just disappointing. If you’re looking for a grim crime thriller with deep thematic resonance, The Ritual Killer is not it. If you want to watch Morgan Freeman and Cole Hauser act in separate movies that just happen to be playing on the same screen, then go ahead. Just know that by the time the credits roll, you’ll have the same look on your face as Freeman does in every scene—mild regret and a yearning for something better.
⭐️⭐️ (2/5)
#NotSe7en #MoreLikeFourPointFive #MississippiMysteries #FreemanDeservesBetter #RedboxCinemaHallOfShame
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