The Creature (The Ritual)

"A god. Ancient. One of the Jötunn. A bastard offspring of Loki. We do not say its name. We worship it. It keeps us here. Let us live beyond natural life. No more pain. No more death. Your ritual begins tonight. It is a privilege to worship. You will kneel before the god. If not, it will hang you from the trees."

- A female cultist about the Creature

The Creature is the main antagonist in the 2017 horror film "The Ritual" adapted from novel of the same name. It is a demonic Jötunn that inhabits a forest in Northern Sweden and is venerated by an ancient group of cultists.

Background
As described by one of the Swedish cultists, The Creature is a "bastard son" of the Norse god Loki and is one of the Jötnar, a race of supernatural beings in Norse mythology. It appears as an enormous, elk-like monster with bright yellow eyes, skeletal head antlers and a pair of human-like hands on its head.

The Creature stalks travelers who enters the forest and "marks" the person who has suffered from emotional pain. That person is given a choice; worship The Creature or die at its hands. Those who are not marked by it are tortured and sacrificed.

After centuries, The Creature has created a cult of worshippers, made up of missing people who hiked through the forest. The cultists who worship it are given eternal life and are protected by The Creature from outsiders.

Personality and Traits
As stated before, The Creature is a Jötunn who since ancient times, stalked travelers who enters its home at the forest. It chose those who suffered from emotional pain and offered them salvation and eternal life in exchange of worshipping it as they more easier to converted. It can choose potential followers by marking them on the chest with magical means. But for those who not marked, The Creature will kill them or have its followers sacrificed them to it.

History
A group of friends, Phil, Hutch, Luke and Dom, are hiking in northern Sweden in honor of their friend Rob, who was killed during a store robbery. Hutch converses with Luke and decides to hike through the forest because it is a quicker route back to their lodge. Everyone agrees, and they enter the forest in the early morning.

In the forest, the group notices that the woods are unsettlingly quiet, and come across a large eviscerated elk, skewered on a tree. As rain comes, the group notice a runic symbol carved on a tree and find an abandoned cabin. Upstairs, they discover a headless wooden effigy with deer antlers for arms. The friends are unnerved but decide to stay in the cabin. That night, supernatural occurrences begin; Luke has a nightmare of Rob and wakes up with a strange claw mark on his chest. Subsequently, Hutch wakes up and finds that he had wet his pants. Dom suddenly begins screaming in his sleep before he wakes. Luke heads upstairs and finds Phil, naked and praying in front of the effigy. Frightened, the group hurriedly leave the cabin and plan to continue on their hike.

When the group stops due to Dom injuring his leg, Luke climbs to a clearing to scout out the area and sees The Creature hiding behind a tree before it startles him. Dom and Luke get into an argument before they continue. As they camp one evening, Hutch asks Luke to head to the lodge at sunrise while he will stay with Phil and Dom. However, Luke awakens in the night to The Creature's footsteps before it abducts Hutch. The friends later find his body in the same manner as the elk; bloody and impaled on a tree. Luke climbs to higher ground and sees that they are nearly to their lodge; when he returns, Phil is taken by The Creature and is momentarily found impaled on a tree. Luke and Dom run from The Creature and stumble on a village, where they are held hostage by a group of Swedish cultists. One of them reveals that Luke will be offered to join the group, as they are all marked like him, but Dom is sacrificed to The Creature, who takes the form of his wife before killing him.

Luke escapes and ignites the cabins on fire; The Creature appears and kills the surviving cultists out of anger. Luke runs from The Creature into the forest and defends himself with an axe when he is nearly killed. Luke flees until he exits the forest; The Creature halts by the forest's boundary, and cannot cross. Luke and The Creature exchange roars at each other before Luke heads to the lodge.

Gallery
Jötunn