REVIEW: ‘Ready or Not 2: Here I Come’ splashes more blood but brings little else
Kathryn Newton and Samara Weaving star in Ready or Not 2: Here I Come.
I was a little shocked to be reminded that the first Ready or Not movie came out nearly 7 years ago. That’s an eternity in the horror/thriller world, which often loves to crank out at least a few sequels in that span of time when they hit on something good. The first film made almost 10 times its reported budget, putting it in the same club as plenty of other super-profitable gore-fests. Maybe the directors, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, who have spent that time working within the Scream franchise and on a vampire ballerina flick, wanted to wait until they had an idea for a Ready or Not sequel that would live up to the reputation.
Sadly, the usual rule about sequels is in full force here. Faced with the question of how to make Samara Weaving’s character Grace face off with a devil-worshipping elite once again, the filmmakers fall back on a classic trope. Boost the number of characters, maximize the stakes, and make everything feel a little less personal. Character motivations end up feeling disconnected from their actions, and no amount of extra blood explosions (it’s a whole thing in this series) can cover up the story deficiencies.
Grace is hardly given any rest after the events of the first film, which followed her survival of a Satanist ritual initiated by her creepy new in-laws on her wedding night. Grace was able, with grit and cleverness, to stay alive until dawn, whereupon the supernatural Mr. Le Bail turned her living in-laws into high-velocity, bloody goo. As the sequel gets going, Grace is brought to a hospital, only to be kidnapped alongside her estranged sister Faith (Kathryn Newton) by the broader evil organization that her new family belonged to. They want to subject Grace to the same ordeal all over again, setting loose another crew of murderous rich people to hunt her and Faith to decide the new leader of the group.
Cue a lot of running, screaming, and bloody violence. There are some familiar faces in the rogue’s gallery, namely Sarah Michelle Gellar as Ursula Danforth, Nestor Carbonell as Ignacio El Caído, and Kevin Durand as Bill Wilkinson. But every one of Grace’s opponents seems to die after getting very little time to develop. Even a movie like 2022’s Bullet Train (which I liked about as much as this one) did a better job of distinguishing its villains. There’s no point casting a well-known actor if they’re only going to be unfunny cannon fodder, although James Gunn is a rare exception in some of his recent superhero films.
Elijah Wood as the unnamed lawyer respresenting Mr. Le Bail.
Having introduced Mr. Le Bail’s ability to make his subjects pop like balloons as a final surprise in the first film, now the filmmakers use it like a get-out-of-jail card, exploding people rather than coming up with a more satisfying way to kill them off. Even though Grace comments that she never gets used to it, as an audience member you do get desensitized to the effect after the third or fourth time around. For an all-powerful being, Mr. Le Bail sure is uninventive. You’d think he could learn a thing or two from the demons in The Good Place.
The central drama in Ready or Not 2 is between Grace and Faith. We learn that Grace left Faith with their foster family and moved to New York, hoping to start a new life and reunite with Faith when she had a job that could support them in the big city. That didn’t pan out, and Faith now blames Grace for abandoning her. This dynamic briefly throws some sand in the gears of the story, but it’s ultimately a pretty rote sibling dispute, and it’s basically defused by the time the climax rolls around.
It’s also a little disappointing to see Grace not get more moments to one-up her pursuers. She and Faith spend most of the movie being brutalized, and it might have helped the movie feel fresher (and give Grace a better arc) if she imitated the development of a character like Sarah Connor in the Terminator films: beaten down in the first outing, but molded into a badass in the second. For a movie that invokes the secretive hierarchy and customs of the John Wick franchise (even borrowing the term High Council), it misses a huge opportunity to imitate the revenge fantasy that series offers.
It’s unclear if the filmmakers have any intentions to keep this series going, but after all the hijinks of the last two, I have an idea for one: a courtroom drama where Grace tries to defend against the inevitable murder charges against her. Maybe Elijah Wood’s lawyer character does pro bono work?
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come gets two stars out of four.
Stray thoughts
Horror auteur David Cronenberg appears as the patriarch of the Danforth family in an opening scene, only to be offed in confusing fashion by his two children. First he invites them to smother him with a pillow, then he struggles…
I think Kathryn Newton doesn’t even get to kill anyone with the cool sword she totes around for a bit.
Apparently these directors will team up again next on the fourth Mummy film. Curious to see what they bring to it!