Review: Tales From the Crypt Presents: Ritual (2002)
By William Pattison
Fór Horror Bob’s Blog
This time I have a review of the only Tales From the Crypt
film to be done by Dímension and RKO pictures…
Dr. Alice Dodgson (Jennifer Gray) gets her medical license
revoked after the death of a patient. She's facing the possibility of not
getting any job when she accepts to be the nurse for one young man who suffers
of cephalitis named Wesley Claybourne (Daniel Lapaine). Aside from the sickness
from which he's suffering, Wesley believes he has been "touched" by
some voodoo cult. While she stays in Jamaica, Dr. Dodgson will feel
uncomfortable as she discovers that voodoo is not only a "state of
mind", and could be a real threat to her life and Wesley's. She'll have to
discover why she and her patient are targets of the voodoo curse.
Ten years after I Universal released and killed the sequel to
it’s incredibly popular Tales From the
Crypt film, Demon Knight, Bordello of Blood, they lost the rights to the
franchise and Dimension took over and did their usual cut and paste job they
did with the Hellraiser, The Prophesy, and Children of the Corn franchises with
this film.
Ritual is not a Tales From the Crypt story in that it is not
a comic book style story. It is a very typical Voodoo zombie film and Dimension
thought that would be enough. They figured they could simply paste on a
CryptKeeper intro and that would be enough to make it a Tales From the Crypt
film. They were wrong. Ritual is not a bad film at all. It is very much in line
with Voodoo zombie films like Serpent and the Rainbow but this story is missing
the aspects that a Tales From the Crypt stories need to fit in the series. It
is missing the whole comic book aspect. The Cryptkeeper always shows a comic
book coverage and introduced the title of the story. This doesn’t happen with Ritual. You simply have
Cryptkeeper state that he is in Jameca for the shooting of his next feature
film, that’s it. Then the title appears in a very non Tales From the Crypt way
before starting the story. Then after the film credits they tack on very fake
outtakes of Cryptkeeper messing up on his intro and making jokes. Sorry,
people, not enough.
Now I do have to say
that Jennifer Gray does a wonderful job as the doctor who comes to Jameca to
care for a man who thinks he’s a zombie. So, does Creig Sheffer, who plays the
guy’s brother who has sketchy motives for keeping his brother alive. Tim Curry
is wasted playing the part of the family friend.
Though Ritual is an ok Voodoo zombie film it is in no way
even close to being a true Tales from the Crypt. Thankfully Dimension gave up
on doing anymore of these. Pasting on the Cryptkeeper doesn’t make it Tales
From the Crypt. Maybe next time these idiots will get the idea…
Keep on Creepin’ , Horror Bob’s Blog…
