Ready or Not 2: Here I Come
So here it comes: the sequel to the 2019 splatter farce, which is just as illogical and overblown – if not more so.
The bride!: Samara Weaving
Image courtesy of Walt Disney Studios.
by JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
“Do you like scary movies?” If your answer is “yes,” then you should steer clear of this tosh, as it’s not remotely scary. Nor does it display an ounce of the wit in the trailer for Scary Movie 6, the upcoming spoof of this whole bloody thing. Ready or Not 2 is not scary because not only are the characters vaudevillian caricatures, but because the shock effects are dialled up to eleven. A dribble of blood can be chilling, but a swimming pool of the stuff is stupid. Likewise, when the f word is judiciously placed in an unexpected clause, it can merit a chuckle. But when the f word is used as a form of verbal punctuation, it’s hard to give a fuck. Thus, Ready or Not 2 is a spectacle of excess, in which to spice up the mayhem, a hit song is periodically introduced to lend a note of pop cultural muscle. So, if you’ve never heard Bonnie Tyler’s ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ on a movie soundtrack before, you’re in for a treat.
Ready or Not 2 opens with a smidgen of promise as the closing shot of the first movie segues into the events of the sequel, where the directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett seem eager to prove that more is emphatically a case of less. And so we get two scream queens for the price of one. It transpires that the estranged younger sister of Grace (Samara Weaving, from Mayhem, The Babysitter, Scream VI) is played by none other than Kathryn Newton (Freaky, Lisa Frankenstein, Abigail) who, as fate would have it, is called Faith. Discovered on the steps of the blazing pyre of her in-laws’ mansion – still adorned in her blood-spattered bridal dress – Grace is escorted off the premises by police and arrested for arson. In hospital, and handcuffed to her bed, Grace is visited by Faith, to whom Grace is conveniently able to relate the events of the first film for those viewers who were too lazy to have seen it in the first place.
When Grace married the man of her dreams, she had no idea that his obscenely rich kin were part of an omnipotent family in thrall to Satan. And part of the wedding ritual was to choose a card from a box and to act out a game that promised dire consequences. When Grace pulled out the card marked ‘Hide-and-Seek’, she was required to play out the game and try to stay alive until dawn, when by the light of day all her in-laws would perish. And guess what? She survives. Once she’s related these events to Faith, the latter just stares at her and declares, “you are so going to jail.” That’s before the entrance of another scream queen, Sarah Michelle Gellar, who portrays the member of another entitled family that likes to play games and are bent on finishing Grace off at their grace-and-favour mansion in Connecticut – before sunrise. This time, embroiled in all this madness herself, Faith is forced to concede that her sister is telling the truth…
Game-playing in horror films is nothing new – the Saw franchise almost bled it dry single-handed – but when it’s played for laughs on such a pantomimic, over-the-top scale, it neither tickles the funny bone nor curdles the blood. Perhaps only Elijah Wood maintains an inkling of dignity as the attorney and compere, with an almost imperceptible twinkle in his eye, while the rest of the actors just scream over each other to deadening effect. There is little rapport between Weaving and Newton – they don’t even look like sisters – while the desperately pro-active music, silly sound effects and ineffectual stuntwork all add to the tedium.
Cast: Samara Weaving, Kathryn Newton, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shawn Hatosy, David Cronenberg, Elijah Wood, Nestor Carbonell, Kevin Durand, Olivia Cheng, Varun Saranga, Nadeem Umar-Khitab, Masa Lizdek, Maia Jae, Dan Beirne.
Dir Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, Pro Tripp Vinson, James Vanderbilt, William Sherak and Bradley J. Fischer, Ex Pro Samara Weaving, Screenplay Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy, Ph Brett Jutkiewicz, Pro Des Andrew M. Stearn, Ed Jay Prychidny, Music Sven Faulconer, Costumes Avery Plewes, Sound Adam Stein.
Vinson Films/Mythology Entertainment/Radio Silence-Walt Disney Studios.
107 mins. USA. 2025. UK and US Rel: 20 March 2026. Cert. 15.
