Film review – Ready or Not Here I Come (Ready or Not 2 Here I Come)

Ready or Not Here I Come (Ready or Not 2 Here I Come)

Between RoN films, the Radio Silence guys – now, basically, directors Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin – have made two Screams and one Abigail.  They kind of have a lock on a particular type of fun horror with a political edge.  Okay, it may not add up to more than rich people are awful and predate on the poor just for fun, – inherent in the gothic from the start (this Godwin’s Law can go back to William Godwin and Caleb Williams) and highlit by key works like The Most Dangerous Game and Hostel and Fitzgerald’s ‘The Diamond as Big as the Ritz’ – but that feels particularly relevant in this moment.  I remember when films like The Everlasting Secret Family and Eyes Wide Shut seemed ludicrous, now they feel understated.

This opens with Grace (Samara Weaving) bloody in her bridal dress and a restaging of the last moments of RoN, then recaps the earlier story/premise while bringing on Grace’s estranged sister Faith (Kathryn Newton, of Abigail) as co-heroine.  Grace’s victory over the Le Domas clan in the first film opens up a spot on a cabal of devil-worshipping plutocrats – so a rerun of hide and seek, as the women are pursued around a luxury resort by rich bastards with unusual weapons they aren’t that proficient in the use of, is intercut with a series of power struggles between horrible people.  Twins Ursula (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Titus (Shawn Hatosy) smother their aged father (David Cronenberg), with his blessing, so they can represent a dominant clan in the contest, and the other baddies from around the world include Francesca (Maia Jae), who was jilted by the preppy git who married Grace last time round and holds a massive grudge (and has packed her own wedding dress).

The mythology is explained a bit by a lawyer/MC (Elijah Wood) but mostly it’s self-contained action/gore/gag scenes as the heroines bicker and bond over the course of a gruelling evening.  The gameplay of the first film recedes and this feels a lot like something scripted with the Scream 2 sequel rules in mind – bigger, more ridiculous, longer, more kills, higher stakes … if slightly sacrificing the economy of setting and effect of the first film.  Still, it ends with a cultworth of bad guys tearing each other to bits in a pit of rotting goat carcasses then exploding en masse as the Devil seems to reach the end of his patience with rich awful people.

With Nestor Carbonell, Olivia Cheng, Kevin Durand.  Written by Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy, who’ve been on most of the RS films and other recent significant horror projects abd probably deserve quite a bit of the credit.  Weaving again is magnificently pissed off and bedraggled, though Newton – who has impressed in Freaky, Abigail and other things lately – takes while to break out of dragalong sidekick mode and escalate to equal partner in a double act.  If there’s a RoN3, I imagine it’ll be called Grace and Faith Go to Washington.