Released: 9th April
Seen: 5th July
In 2019, the filmmaking team known as Radio Silence graduated from making short films that were part of anthology features into making a feature-length film all of their own. That film was Ready Or Not which presented us with a young woman named Grace (Samara Weaving) who married into a rich family and had to take part in a little family ritual where they play a game on the night a new family member joins them. Unfortunately, she picks hide and seek and thus is required to hide while the family hunts her. It was a glorious romp of a film, very silly and campy at times but with enough tension, good characters and enough gore to satisfy any horror fan. It ended with a spectacular shower of blood flying everywhere as Grace won her little game and made her new family explode. It was a glorious film that probably didn’t need a sequel, but damn I’m glad it has one.
Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come takes place immediately after the first movie, as in the first shot of this film is a perfect recreation of the last shot from the first film. Grace is taken to the hospital, where her emergency contact is contacted, it turns out it’s her estranged sister Faith (Kathryn Newton) who she hasn’t spoken to in several years. Of course Grace can’t just be allowed to recover because then we don’t have a film, instead it turns out that her winning the game from the first movie has triggered a meeting of a dark council made up of five families (it used to be six but Grace took care of the La Domas family in the last movie) who are now going to be playing their own game of hide and seek. They have to hunt Grace down before dawn to claim the spot as the head of the dark council that runs everything, Grace just has to try and keep herself and Faith alive despite them still actively dealing with years of personal trauma and while being handcuffed together because… I don’t know, the council thought it’d be very funny..
Ready Or Not 2 smartly assumes you’ve seen the first movie and therefore throws away any notion that this is a surprise to you. Within a very short amount of time we’re introduced to a new cavalcade of characters, from twins Ursula (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Titus Danforth (Shawn Hatosy) to the swarthy Ignacio El Caido (Néstor Carbonell) and one character simply known as The Lawyer (Elijah Wood) who is there to ensure the rules are being followed. Once the new batch of characters are set up, the mayhem begins in glorious fashion without holding back. There is no more need for surprise or suspense, everyone involved knows what’s at stake (for the most part) so instead of a lengthy scene of Grace slowly learning how real this is, we just get to see her trying to deal with it while also being handcuffed to her sibling.
The emotional core of the movie is that bond between Grace and Faith, something that is effectively and quickly set up within a few seconds of them seeing each other in a way that doesn’t ruin anything we knew about Grace in the last movie. We instantly get that they haven’t talked in a while and that Faith kind of resents Grace for abandoning her, which makes for an interesting dynamic for them to carry throughout the film. It also helpfully gives Samara someone to bounce off for most of the film so she can break up the carnage with some fun character moments that really let you learn more about Grace and how smart and badass she can be.
It helps this film a lot that every character involved is, for the most part, intelligent enough to make smart choices. They plan things out, they don’t fall for obvious traps, no one has a sudden attack of stupidity when the plot calls for it. The characters are actually thinking through the situation in a way that feels sensible in this situation, they don’t do dumb things like leave a useful weapon behind or just randomly do something to draw attention to themselves. It makes it so much easier to root for the heroes because they’re actually trying to survive which immediately makes for a more interesting film than dumb characters surviving because the plot says they have to.
It’s also wildly impressive how carefully this film manages to blend the comedy and the horror. This one is certainly a little less heavily comedic than the previous film, but it still manages to get a fair few hilarious scenes in, including a fist fight where both parties have been sprayed with mace and are therefore basically blind. These moments help keep things light, which is good because the dark moments this time get so much darker. There are more than a few moments that are a hair’s breath away from being a little too dark for this franchise and the skilled hands of the people making it balance everything out quite well. It never sacrifices the story for the purposes of making a joke, which the first film sometimes felt like it was doing.
Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come is a delightfully twisted follow up to the already great original. With a stunning cast, some great setpieces, a truly kickass score and more bloody explosions than you could even begin to count, this film found a way to justify existing as a sequel without tainting the original. It’s a genuinely great little horror film that expands the Ready or Not universe in fun, interesting ways. I’m glad that this film didn’t get hidden away among the other horror sequels, this one stands out as something special.
Movie Meister Reviews 