Movie Review -- Ready or Not 2: Here I Come

© Searchlight Pictures

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come remixes the formula just a little but mostly remains the same campy nonsense.
by Jeremy Fogelman

Cast: Samara Weaving, Kathryn Newton, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shawn Hatosy, Néstor Carbonell, David Cronenberg, Elijah Wood

Rating: ★★★

Ready or Not came out in 2019 and was considered a breath of fresh air in the slasher/horror/revenge genre space -- and delivered a star-making performance by lead Samara Weaving as Grace. Through positive word of mouth, I watched it in 2020 when there was a lot of unexpected extra time and found it quite enjoyable. The rich people were caricatured in a fun way, with the joke always on them and their awfulness, and it was easy to root for Grace. Now we have the sequel, five years after the original but nobody’s aged a day.

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (and the movie is self-aware enough to realize that this subtitle was expected) comes from the same team as the first, directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, and written by Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy. We follow Grace immediately as the last movie ends, completely bloody, smoking a cigarette as the cops arrive. Now we begin as she’s taken to the hospital, and meet her sister Faith (fellow scream queen Kathryn Newton), who has been estranged from for seven years.

The reveal happens that Grace’s survival triggers a new larger game of hide and seek, but only to some extent -- the group of survivor 'council' families must now compete to kill Grace, unless she can survive -- and whoever wins gets to control everything (loosely explained, but there are some hints of what it means). And of course, Faith is unwittingly dragged along, raising the stakes and providing a necessary push for them to reconcile their traumatic past if they want to survive.

© Searchlight Pictures

The opposing families are a mix of international types -- the one WASP American family, the Danworths, led by David Cronenberg as Chester, parent to Ursula (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Titus (Shawn Hatosy) and their wayabout cousin. The Spanish family, led by Ignacio (Néstor Carbonell) and his unhinged kids, the vaguely Indian Madhu (Varun Saranga) with his bulky brother and his distant wife, and the Chinese Wan Chen Xing (Olivia Cheng) with her useless son. All under the careful eye of the mysterious lawyer, played by Elijah Wood (in a delightful role he clearly relished).

None of them really get that much in the way of complex characterization -- most characters are simply there for comedy beats, but ultimately that is the best part of the movie -- it’s consistently pretty funny, puncturing any seriousness -- but also means that the more serious moments are harder to take seriously.

This is nothing against the winning performances of everyone involved, even if some are simply asked to play it very broad. Once again Grace is forced to endure absurd levels of violence, and deal with her own troubled past with her sister too -- their past is also vaguely described, as if perhaps making it clearer would lessen the campiness of the whole endeavor.

Ultimately it remains a fun, gory mess that is still quite enjoyable, even if it doesn’t reinvent the wheel much at all, and leaves the door open for future shenanigans if it comes down to it. The kills remain satisfying, and the rapport between Samara Weaving and Kathryn Newton is fairly well handled. Nothing will surprise you here, but then again, maybe it doesn’t need to.