RIOTUS

DrewNote: Grace survived a brutal game of hide and seek with her in-laws, but the fun is just getting started. What she did caused a power vacuum… and the game begins anew.

SPOILER WARNING: Some spoilers for Ready or Not lie ahead; it’s kind of unavoidable, you know?

When Grace MacCaullay (Samara Weaving) got married to her beloved Alex LeDomas (Mark O’Brien), she thought spending their wedding night with his family might be a chance to know them better. Little did she know that meant drawing a “game card” for the family to play. She drew Hide and Seek–which caused Alex to freak out. See, that card is a death card. The rules by which his family live require that they hunt Grace until dawn. They must kill her or something terrible happens.

Something terrible happens. Grace outlasted the murderous family and saw them die gruesomely, their palatial home set ablaze. Now she’s sitting outside as police and firemen arrive, smoking a cigarette… and passing out.

The last few seconds of the first movie are the beginning of READY OR NOT 2: HERE I COME, a worthy sequel to this fun 2019 game of cat-and-mouse.

While Grace wakes up in a hospital bed with a police detective at her feet, in a luxurious room not too far away, the elderly Chester Danforth (David Cronenberg) is told by the Lawyer (Elijah Wood) that the LeDomas family failed and is extinct. With them gone, “the ball is in play” and half a dozen notifications go out around the world. Along with Danforth’s own children–Titus (Shawn Hatosy) and Ursula (Sarah Michelle Gellar)–two brothers from London, an Asian woman and her son, a gambler from Atlantic City, and a Hispanic celebrity and his kids get the news and all are jubilant. The game is on!

Meanwhile, the police detective is ready to take her to the police station for a statement (despite Grace having suffered some truly awful injuries), when Faith (Kathryn Newton) arrives. Grace’s long-estranged sister is still her emergency contact but neither sister is happy about it. They’re barely reunited before one of those above attacks Grace after killing the detective.

He finds out the hard way that there’s no getting around the rules. And Grace and Faith are soon in the hands of a satanic order competing for the ultimate prize: the high seat in their council. The Lawyer explains the rules: no attacking the other hunters and NO killing them (even accidentally); the game lasts until dawn; and whoever kills Grace wins.

Handcuffed to her angry, rebellious sister, Grace has to figure out how to survive this second round of Hide and Seek, because the stakes are a lot higher and the players a lot more dangerous.

Weaving dials her game up to 11 for this one, too numb from the immediacy of her last struggle to pitch a fit; liberated from a ball gag, she asks for a cigarette (and is denied). She’s quite an action heroine, one who endures a terrifying amount of punishment just to play one last card (so to speak). It’s really a terrific performance.

Newton matches Weaving step for step, her anger at her sister shading into furiously defending her whenever she can. She gives the role her all and it shows. Worth noting: Weaving and Newton do an excellent job of playing a grudging love-hate relationship and have great chemistry.

Gellar rarely has the opportunity these days to showcase her villainous side, but Ursula is a gem; darkly funny and grimly determined to kill Grace to perpetuate her family’s primacy, she clashes with and works alongside her brother, even as she realizes only one of them can be in charge. This part gives her the chance to remind us how good she is.

With Hatosy as a weak-souled brute, Wood as the inscrutable keeper of the rules, and a tremendous rogue’s gallery of hunters, the movie roars along with a pleasing balance of action, slapstick gore, and the obligatory “airing of grievances” between the two sisters, plus a truly hilarious ending.

Big credit also goes to Matt Bettinelli-Olpin (co-writer and co-director), Tyler Gillett (co-director) and writers Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy, returning to expand on their original movie in clever, seamless ways. It’s not easy to build out an idea to make a solid sequel but these guys did it!

Coming in at about an hour and forty minutes, it doesn’t waste time or overstay its welcome. Fans of crisp horror/comedy are going to love it, and if you liked the first, this is a must-see, building on the first’s mythology while giving us new villains to set against our intrepid heroines.