Loki fathered a menagerie of nightmarish creatures - his children include Fenrir, the monstrous wolf that is destined to devour Odin during the apocalyptic battle of Ragnarok, Hel, the half-rotting goddess of the Underworld, and Jormungand, the Midgard Serpent, which is long enough to wrap itself around the world and bite its own tail. The real Loki is completely chaotic - a malicious, mischievous, shape-shifting trickster who sometimes plays the hero, often the villain, and usually, is just messing with the nature of reality. But not always.Įither way, the beast is also described as the spawn of Loki, which is interesting in itself, as the Loki in Norse mythology is way more intense than Tom Hiddleston. They’re kind of vague, actually, and the ambiguous term could mean something impossibly vast, human-size, beautiful, or hideous.Ĭharacters in Norse mythology tend to shapeshift with alarming frequency, and the only defining trait of the jötunn seems to be that they are enemies of the gods. They’re not necessarily large, for one thing. For giants in Norse mythology aren’t the “Jack and the Beanstalk” variety. There’s just enough of a hint, however, to be interesting.įor the creature is described as a “jötunn,” which is Norse mythology means a giant.
#THE RITUAL MONSTER MOVIE#
Thankfully, there’s not an excess of backstory behind this creature explaining the detailed origin of a movie monster tends to kill both the mystery and the threat. I’m hoping the popularity of this beast might change that - the monstrosities found at the bottom of the sea and inside our underwear are scary and all, but I want to see more creatures that defy the laws of physics. Most concept artists appear to take their inspiration directly from nature, and for some reason, human genitalia, rather than letting their imagination veer into hallucinogenic territory. But for whatever reason, it’s rare to see such a surreal creature on screen. Gods are the collective product of the imagination, and tend to be depicted as odd combinations of human and animal, especially in pagan traditions. The creature is a literal god (or at least, the descendant of one - we’ll get to that in a bit). The design is, of course, biologically impossible, more like a feverish offspring of the imagination than an evolutionary accident, and that’s why it’s so appropriate. It’s an unsettling, potent mixture, like Princess Mononoke and salvia divinorum. Two arms act as mandibles, and the other two hold up the antlers of the abomination. The body is that of a malformed elk, while the head is composed of two humans, who may be in fact sentient and eternally trapped there, for all we know. But that silhouetted reveal is very skillful indeed, for a slight turn of the head exposes the dreadful nature of the thing, an unholy blend of man and beast that would alarm H.P. And the first proper glimpse of the thing gives the underwhelming impression of a deranged moose. Let’s go for the most obvious point first - I was fully expecting this creature to be a generic blur of bad CGI, or simply remain unseen throughout the film.