The Ritual

Four friends with a long-standing – but strained – connection take a hiking trip into the Swedish wilderness, from which they may never return.

Set in the 14th century, three women accused of witchcraft are hanged by a priest. The priest performs a ritual to prevent the bodies from coming back to life. While successfully completing the ritual for the first two of the bodies from left to right, the third takes on a demonic appearance and kills the priest. Meanwhile, Teutonic Knights…

Set in the 14th century, three women accused of witchcraft are hanged by a priest. The priest performs a ritual to prevent the bodies from coming back to life. While successfully completing the ritual for the first two of the bodies from left to right, the third takes on a demonic appearance and kills the priest. Meanwhile, Teutonic Knights…

Playwright and novelist Yukio Mishima foreshadowed his own violent suicide with this ravishing short feature, his only foray into filmmaking, yet made with the expressiveness and confidence of a true cinema artist. All prints of Patriotism (Yûkoku), which depicts the seppuku of an army officer, were destroyed after Mishima’s death in 1970, though the negative was saved, and the film resurfaced thirty-five years later. New viewers will be stunned at the depth and clarity of Mishima’s vision, as well as his graphic depictions of sex and death.

Chris Shaw was an up and coming Internet sensation. In his videos he performed rituals he found on the web, testing their legitimacy in summoning spirits. His last video never got to be broadcast, until now. Chris films everything as he, his girlfriend Tara and their friends Brent, Lorraine and Nicole travel to Brent's holiday house nestled in the vast, isolated plains of rural Victoria. Once they arrive they prepare and perform the latest ritual Beckoning the Butcher, a mysterious invocation Chris found online, designed to entice a paranormal entity into this world. All who took part in the ritual that night went missing without a trace. The only clue for investigators was the found footage contained on Chris's camera. Unfortunately for all involved, the footage itself seemed to pose more questions than to provide answers. Using interviews from family members, detectives and psychics, along with Chris's footage, this film aims to piece together the events of that fateful night and determine how the players vanished.