The list of Academy Award winners and certified legends of the silver screen to end up churning out a succession of terrible VOD thrillers is a lengthy one, but you’ve got to wonder why Morgan Freeman decided that his 80s was the ideal time to start showing up in dreck like The Ritual Killer.
As the definitive wizened old sage for multiple generations of film fans, it’s not as if the sonorous icon would be short of work, but he’s made a point of racking up as many bargain basement credits as humanly possible. Re-teaming with director George Gallo for a fourth time, Freeman’s latest collaboration with the filmmaker winds up in similar territory to dire John Travolta vehicle The Poison Rose.
Cole Hauser headlines as a grieving father and police officer, who gets drawn into the hunt for a mass murderer who commits his killings under the rules of a tribal ritual known as Muti. Freeman delivers exposition as only he can in the role of a mysterious anthropologist, who harbors a shocking secret of his own.
Without an original bone in its body, The Ritual Killer does at least win one point for its straightforward and entirely self-explanatory title, which helpfully sums up the gist of the plot. Beyond that, though, there’s barely anything worth recommending, not that streaming subscribers would take any words of warning on board.
Per FlixPatrol, Freeman’s latest inexplicable descent into formulaic fluff has appeased the gods by cracking the iTunes Top 10 chart in the United States, and it probably won’t be the last time we see the veteran in this particular sandbox.
Published: Mar 12, 2023 02:00 pm