‘The Bridge Curse: Ritual’ Netflix Movie Review - Game of Ghosts

Lester Hsi's The Bridge Curse: Ritual contains some well-executed horror sequences. My favorite among them is the one where a character realizes that the security camera is coming towards them. What's also admirable about the film is how it integrates an augmented reality game into its spooky events. The games themselves have a neat design. For instance, I liked how a lantern doubles up as a map to guide the player. The movie is carefully thought out in terms of the visuals. There is a neat trick towards the end involving a character breaking through several mirrors. The camera, near the beginning, flies around so swiftly, so freely, that you half-expect the film to become something along the lines of Michael Bay's Ambulance.

The Bridge Curse: Ritual is at its best when the ghosts lurk in the shadows. Some of the jump scares, too, are competently executed. But like most horror films, The Bridge Curse: Ritual loses its powers when the evil spirit comes out in the open. The monster, with scary, ugly makeup, elicits mild chuckles. His design is sorely uninspired. A mannequin that fills Ting (Wang Yu Xuan) with terror turns out to be more frightening than the main phantom.

I have not seen The Bridge Curse (2020), so I don't know how much of the story is connected to the prequel. Still, I wondered if the school is so haunted (and there is a video of a boy disappearing in an elevator), why don't the concerned authorities tighten up the security so that the students don't end up performing fatal rituals. There is only one security guard on the entire campus, De (JC Lin), which just seems absurd. Also, where are the parents? Ting's friends get into a ghostly accident, and we don't hear a word from their fathers or mothers.

For a while, the more we learn about the story, the more uninteresting it becomes. That is until you reach that endless loop twist, which raises some logical questions (how long have the characters been stuck in the loop?), though I was more than willing to accept everything without much protest. What made the movie dull for me was the sentimental climax, where a boy sacrifices himself for someone. By this point, the scary sensations cease to exist, and the melodrama only gives rise to plenty of yawns.

The Bridge Curse: Ritual also repeats the same horror movie cliché of opening the doors for a sequel by not offering a proper conclusion. I guess many writers today have forgotten that a story can end without promising future installments. These unnecessary attempts at creating franchises are the real horrors of the modern cinematic world.

Final Score- [4.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times