2019’s Ready or Not didn’t just eat the rich—it shot, stabbed, maimed, dismembered, and literally blew them up.
It was class warfare on a delirious black-comedy scale, and now it’s back to dish out even more gleefully deranged punishment to the 1% with Ready or Not 2: Here I Come.
After taking the reins of an already established franchise by helming Scream (V) and Scream VI, co-directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett strive to transform their breakout horror hit into its own series with the new sequel (March 20, in theaters). Upping the ante in order to compensate for the fact that their conceit’s novelty has mostly worn off, the directors put Samara Weaving through a vicious wringer while giving her a comrade-in-arms in co-star Kathryn Newton.
The familiarity of their social satire often makes it feel like shooting fish in a barrel. Yet thanks to a host of colorful performances and an emphasis on over-the-top violence, they mostly pull off their double-dip trick.
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come picks up at the precise conclusion of its predecessor, with Grace MacCaullay (Weaving) being rushed to the hospital after enduring a hellish nightmare. Namely, she was hunted for sport by her husband-to-be’s family, whose pre-marriage tradition involved playing a deadly version of hide-and-seek as a means of placating their master, Mr. Le Bail (aka, the Devil!).
In recovery, Grace is informed by the police that she’s the prime suspect in the clan’s demise, and her sister Faith (Newton)—from whom she’s been estranged for years, and who arrives because she’s her sibling’s emergency contact—agrees that Grace is in terrible legal trouble.
Fortunately for Weaving’s protagonist, she’s destined to avoid standing trial for crimes she didn’t commit, because before she can exit the hospital, she and Faith are attacked by a coked-up Atlantic City psycho (Kevin Durand).
This assault doesn’t end in Grace and Faith’s demise. Instead, they’re drugged and transported to the home of Ursula (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Titus Danforth (Shawn Hatosy), who are members of a Satanic council of families all vying for the “high chair” that will grant them ultimate rule-the-world power. This position is up for grabs because Grace survived her battle against her would-be in-laws, and the way it’s attained is by one of the remaining clans slaying Grace in, yes, another game of hide-and-seek.
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come’s set-up is more than a bit tortured, what with Ursula and Titus offing their domineering paterfamilias (horror legend David Cronenberg) so they can compete for the high chair. Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett, however, don’t dawdle on what amount to unimportant details, keeping the pedal to the metal from the start so they can swiftly get to the homicidal good stuff.
Competing for Beelzebub’s favor is a collection of international soul-sellers from Spain (Néstor Carbonell), Shanghai (Olivia Cheng), and London (Nadeem Umar-Khitab), and their cartoonishness is in line with the material’s gonzo spirit. The same goes for Elijah Wood as Mr. Le Bail’s emissary, a lawyer who oversees these festivities and makes sure everyone is playing by the demonic rules.
Wood’s participation as a character overseeing a ring of power is emblematic of Ready or Not 2: Here I Come’s cheeky sense of humor, and the proceedings stay silly even as the bloodshed escalates.
Grace and Faith’s ordeal takes place inside (and on the grounds surrounding) an opulent lodge resembling the sort of cinematic locale Vincent Price often frequented, as well as an adjoining hotel where a couple’s nuptials are rudely cut short. As before, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett’s film is like a Looney Tunes variation of The Most Dangerous Game with a decidedly matrimonial spin. And despite her new circumstances, an “I Do” eventually factors into Grace’s dilemma. So too does her crimson-stained wedding dress, which she dons for the majority of this mayhem.
The film delivers a gaggle of upper-crust villains whose sole interest is sitting atop the proverbial food chain and who don’t care about committing atrocities to reach it, and the cast is fanatical in just the right ways. Still, there’s nothing particularly original about Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy’s script’s conception of these cretins, whose selfishness, greed, and ruthlessness are rather one-dimensional.
They’re stock caricatures, and that includes Gellar’s Ursula and Hatosy’s Titus, two scions eager to live up to their father’s legacy and unsure if they can trust each other not to stick a knife in their back.
Weaving remains one of modern cinema’s preeminent B-movie actresses—a star who’s intensely comfortable playing heroines who are beset by psychopaths, up to their necks in gory madness, and proficient with guns, blades, and similar lethal weapons. The harried Grace suffers one nasty injury after another in Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, and Weaving’s mixture of toughness, freaked-out anxiety, and exhaustion is sturdy. This makes up for the fact that, regardless of Newton’s solid turn, Grace and Faith’s bickering about their failings (and who’s responsible for their seven-year falling out) is long on spite but short on funniness.
Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett’s sharp visual eye and knack for gnarly punchlines keep Ready or Not 2: Here I Come animated, and their decision to lean into the supernatural element of the premise goes some way toward offsetting the film’s general lack of surprise.
Wood is particularly helpful in that regard, embodying his lawyer with a calm, buttoned-up officiousness that adds a layer of drollness to this portrait of cutthroat Faustian bargains. One wishes, actually, that he were a bigger participant in this carnage, rather than merely a bemused administrator and spectator.
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come never truly justifies continuing its predecessor’s story, yet its mixture of brutal action, biblical unholiness, and social critique boasts enough verve to make it a reasonably rambunctious sequel. It’s not clear if Grace and Faith deserve to suffer additional bullying and bludgeoning at the hands of the ultra-wealthy, but on the basis of this second go-round, it’s difficult to bet against Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett devising a few more inspired marital murder games.
