Before you read this review of “Ready or Not 2: Here I Come,” it is important that you have seen the first movie. Sequels as a whole benefit from knowledge of the previous film, but you can usually go into a sequel cold and enjoy it as a standalone experience. If you know that Freddy Krueger is an undead dream demon (dreamon?), you can watch the “Nightmare on Elm Street” films in any order. That is not the case with “Ready or Not 2: Here I Come,” a film that quite literally begins where the first movie ends. After this paragraph, I will move forward under the assumption that you’ve either seen the first movie or do not care about spoilers. Describing “Ready or Not 2: Here I Come” even in vague terms would ruin so many of the wonderful surprises in “Ready or Not.” Consider this your final warning…
“Ready or Not 2: Here I Come” has one major disadvantage just as a concept: we know the game. In the original film, the Satanic mythology and sinister events are slowly revealed as the story unfolds. For a moment, we can pretend that the Le Domas family, the affluent devil-worshipers, are just rich eccentrics. Grace, our protagonist and soon-to-be final girl, has just married Alex Le Domas, an apparently perfect guy. And the curious tradition of playing a game on the night of a wedding seems to be just another weird but harmless quirk of the Le Domas clan. When the “Hide-and-Seek” card is drawn, the deadly nature of the tradition is revealed.
And that’s the strength of being the first film in a series. You get to establish an entirely new world. When the Le Domas family hunts Grace down in an attempt to kill her before sundown, we don’t know exactly how it’s going to play out. Deviltry is suggested, but we don’t know if we’re dealing with the supernatural or just a deeply disturbed family. When the Le Domas clan explodes via black magic, it’s genuinely shocking, incredibly funny, and shows us that there is indeed something occult afoot. Grace’s survival is not entirely obvious until she succeeds at the end. In fact, an earlier draft of the script had Grace being killed by Alex. What “Ready or Not” had going for it was that nobody really knew how it would play out.
Now, when you have to build on a story that relies so heavily on mystery and shock, you are inevitably going to lose something. Believe it or not, the reveal that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person is the twist in Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.” Everyone and their mother knows that now, so all adaptations of the story have to work around that. Some succeed spectacularly and are brilliant in their own right. However, none of them is ever as mysterious as the novella once was because that crucial information is out in the open. Never again can you surprise anyone by proclaiming Jekyll is Hyde. The cat’s out of the bag.
We see folks explode fairly early on in “Ready or Not 2: Here I Come.” We know that all the families shown outside of Grace’s are Hellbound hunters. Grace now has to reconcile with her previously unmentioned sister Faith, so her survival seems far more certain this time around. By the sheer amount of blood and Satanic shenanigans on display, we must classify “Ready or Not: Here I Come” as a horror movie… but it ain’t particularly scary. (One scene involving Faith and the main antagonist is shockingly brutal and nearly disturbing. Nothing else comes close to it, though.) All of this sounds critical, yet I truly enjoyed “Ready or Not: Here I Come.”
The filmmakers were tasked with continuing a story that clearly wasn’t meant to be continued, and they did a bang-up job. Instead of a thriller about an innocent victim having to survive a night of terror, this sequel is a macabre action movie about a badass final girl having to wipe out more murderous satanists. One evil family annihilated was enough in Part 1; five bite the dust this time. Though ostensibly another “The Most Dangerous Game” situation, it’s really more like a slasher film in which the final girl (and her sister) pick off maniacs one by one. With the expansion of the world (The council of several Satanic clans and new rules to play by) and the way our heroes dispose of the bad guys, “Ready or Not 2: Here I Come” feels like horror’s answer to the “John Wick” movies.
Purely as a darkly comic spectacle, this film delivers. I laughed and even winced a few times. There’s no shortage of blood on display here. (To promote the film, there was a special screening in which real fake blood was sprayed onto the audience.) Even though I was certain the sisters would survive, a few sequences had me on edge. Horror needs great popcorn movies as much as any other genre, and “Ready or Not 2: Here I Come” delivers.
The most notable thing about this movie was the pairing of scream queens Samara Weaving and Kathryn Newton as sisters. Weaving returns as Grace, while Newton joins this round as estranged sister Faith. Both actresses have played victims, heroes, and monsters, so it was a blast to see them play off of each other. Their chemistry carries much of the film, and I wouldn’t mind seeing them kick more Satanist butt in a third installment. Shawn Hatosy is surprisingly effective as a psychopath, providing the film’s few chilling moments. Part 1 may work better as a movie, but I think Shawn Hatosy’s Titus is scarier than any of its villains. Sarah Michelle Gellar is always a boon, and David Cronenberg makes the most of his few minutes on screen. Elijah Wood is amusing as a mysterious lawyer known as… The Lawyer. A literal Devil’s Advocate is a great addition to this universe, and the third film (if they choose to make it) should expand upon that role.
“Ready or Not 2: Here I Come” isn’t as surprising as #1. There’s no way it could have been. But considering how easy it is for a sequel to go wrong, it balances familiar thrills with fresh world-building. “Ready or Not” will never be topped, though I wouldn’t mind seeing a new installment every few years. Samara Weaving and Kathryn Newton blowing up rich snobs will never get old. That said, the next installment should try another game. Hide-and-Seek is nice, but how about Tag?
