Original score from the 2025 horror feature film directed by David Midell, starring Al Pacino, Dan Stevens and Ashley Greene, produced by Cinemachine Shop, Andrew Stevens Entertainment, Buzzfeed Studios and Redbird Entertainment, released by Variance Films (USA), Altitude Film Distribution (UK), KMBO (France) and XYZ Films.+

THE STORY: Two priests, one in crisis with his faith and the other confronting a turbulent past, must overcome their differences to perform a risky exorcism.

THE SCORE: “The heart of The Ritual lies in its exploration of grief and the fragile journey toward rediscovering faith after losing all hope. From the beginning, we knew we were being asked to write music for something deeply human, and that meant approaching the score with humility. To capture the film’s late-1920s setting, we built a palette centered on strings, organ, and heavily transformed recordings of church bells. We had initially planned to avoid any modern electronics, but the Ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument invented the very same year the film takes place, proved irresistible. Its voice became an essential part of the score, blurring the line between the familiar and the uncanny. Much of the music comes from taking these raw sounds and reshaping them into something otherworldly. That tension, between the real and the altered, the earthly and the supernatural, mirrors one of the central questions of the film itself: are these events grounded in our world, or is something greater at play? For us, this score is more than accompaniment. It is a reflection of the film’s spiritual journey, and we hope it resonates with listeners long after the final frame fades.” – Joseph Trapanese & Jason Lazarus

THE COMPOSERS: Internationally recognized composer Joseph Trapanese is renowned for his bold fusion of modern electronics and lush orchestration in film, television, and interactive media. His work spans blockbuster collaborations with Daft Punk (Tron: Legacy), M83 (Oblivion), and Mike Shinoda (The Raid), to acclaimed solo scores for No One Will Save You, The Witcher series and Straight Outta Compton. As a producer and arranger, he contributed to the multi-platinum, Grammy Award–winning The Greatest Showman soundtrack. Jason Lazarus is a Los Angeles based composer whose work can be heard on dozens of films and close to a hundred episodes of television. Shortly after receiving a degree in music composition from UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music, Jason was enlisted by composer Joseph Trapanese and has since collaborated both as an additional writer and co-composer on numerous films, television shows and video games. Notable titles include Straight Outta Compton, Netflix’s The Witcher and Shadow and Bone series, and the King Kong anime series Skull Island, which the two co-composed.

MMS25022 THE RITUAL (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Music Composed by JOSEPH TRAPANESE and JASON LAZARUS
Release date: October 17, 2025