I saw the original Ready or Not back in 2019, and it was an amusing enough movie, a fun horror-comedy where a young woman marries into a wealthy family of game-makers who then has to survive the night during a deadly game of hide’n’seek, one she barely survives when it turns out the family had made a pact with the devil (maybe) that said if they didn’t sacrifice her, the entire family would come to a bad end. Much of the humor came from the fact the rich family didn’t really know what they were doing alongside the basic uncertainty that anything would happen if they failed. It was a fun movie, not the best ever made or anything, but fun, and it didn’t seem like the kind of story that needed a sequel.
It got one anyway.
Picking up exactly where the previous movie left off, Grace MacCaullay (Samara Weaving) passes out and almost dies from the injuries she took in the first movie, only to wake up handcuffed to a bed because, it turns out, when you are the sole survivor of a massacre where the family estate burns down and your wedding dress is covered in other people’s blood, well, the police have questions. Grace’s emergency contact soon shows up in the form of Faith (Kathryn Newton), her very estranged younger sister that she hasn’t seen in seven years. However, it turns out the game will be continuing. Because Grace won the game, the “high seat” that secretly controls the world is up for grabs among five powerful families, and when the old holder of the high seat (David Cronenberg) gives up his spot to his twin children Titus (Shawn Hatosy) and Ursula Danforth (Sarah Michelle Gellar), it’s game on as the heads of the other families all converge.
Yes, Grace has to play hide’n’seek again, at the insistence of a nameless lawyer (Elijah Wood), with control at the high seat at stake. And just to ensure that she does play, Faith will be killed if Grace refuses. Handcuffed together, they rush off, with the heads of the different families running around under some strict “play right or else” rules. The different families are all differing degrees of awful, where even the better ones are still pretty bad by their own admission, and it doesn’t help that Grace and Faith have their own issues. Can the sisters pull themselves together long enough to survive until dawn? Who will get the high seat? Does the lawyer have a name? The answers to some of these questions are revealed before the end of the movie.
I said above that one of the fun parts of the first movie was the uncertainty over whether or not the treacherous La Domas family would die at dawn or not. There’s no such uncertainty here, so this sequel goes the opposite route and shows the “exploding bodies” bit a few times throughout the movie to a different comedic effect. Among the various players looking to bring is a young woman (Maia Jae) who had previously been engaged to Grace’s late husband, and she not only holds a grudge, but she is a big part to what was easily the funniest bit in the movie. I was, much like the first one, greatly entertained and had a good time with this one. If it doesn’t do well at the box office, that might be because the studio decided to release it the same weekend as Project: Hail Mary. Much like the first, it’s a fun horror-comedy.
But will it be memorable? There’s a certain class of movie, movies that I have a good time watching but then forget about maybe two weeks later. There’s nothing wrong with the movie, as fun as it is, but it isn’t going to be an all-time favorite. The original Ready or Not certainly fits that bill, and I think this one will too. Besides, Weaving has another movie coming later this year, Over Your Dead Body where, once again, a loved one will be trying to murder her to comedic effect. Maybe that one will be better, or maybe this is just the year where people want to murder Samara Weaving. Only time will tell.
Grade: B
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