Joel on Film

More does not necessarily mean better, but in the case of Ready or Not: Here I Come, it still means just enough to work. This is the sequel, obviously, to 2019’s Ready or Not, the deviously clever and appreciably streamlined horror-comedy action-thriller about a new bride learning the hard lesson of meeting one’s in-laws, and in a fun subversion of our expectations, the action here picks up right where we left off. That is meant literally, by the way: Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett repurpose the final scene, in which the said bride meets emergency services outside a house that’s burning to the ground right behind her.

From there, Grace Le Domas (née MacCaullay), played once again by Samara Weaving, is taken to a hospital and questioned by a curt detective about the circumstances that led to the apparent arson, the presence of two bodies inside the house, the blood that has by now encrusted itself to her wedding dress, and the wounds she sustained over the ordeal that played out in the previous movie. Given that it’s been more than six years since the last movie, screenwriters Dan Busick and R. Christopher Murphy sort of clunkily have Grace directly summarize the events of that movie. It was her wedding night to a man whose family had a weird ritual, resulting in their hunting her down to kill her in the name of a family curse.

The movie was especially pointed in its commentary about the haves and the have-nots, a theme which this sequel essentially expands to cover a vast and secretive conspiracy with the Le Domas family at its center. The Le Domases did not survive their encounter with Grace, and now, the greater entity must correct that. This sequel, then, does exactly what a follow-up should do, which is to expand the world and, at the very least, scale of the destruction.

It’s not only one family here, then, but several of them, represented by the eldest in each. Of primary importance, it would seem, are the Danforths, whose patriarch (played by David Cronenberg in a glorified cameo) is not long for this world but entrusts the future of the highest seat of honor to either of his two children, Titus (Shawn Hatosy) and Ursula (Sarah Michelle Gellar). Because it’s down in the rule book, though, he also alerts the other families, whose selected representatives are now in charge of the game of hide-and-seek to kill Grace.

Once again, then, this is a movie built out of a chase-movie structure, wall to wall with bloody violence as the various bad guys wield weapons with which to take down their prey. They are played by the likes of Néstor Carbonell, Olivia Cheng, Varun Saranga, Dan Beirne as a Danforth cousin and, ever so briefly, Kevin Durand as an assassin who learns a punctual lesson about breaking the rules. There are others here, too, meant to replace the selected family representatives if they die, which might mean the movie technically has a few too many characters.

The one major difference arrives in the form of Faith (Kathryn Newton), Grace’s estranged younger sister, with whom she had a falling-out years before. It’s sort of a breath of fresh air to have a sibling dynamic that’s genuinely complicated and even testy at the best of times, with Weaving and Newton effectively conveying the strain of their years apart and the tough truth about what caused the rift. That makes the hard work of reconciliation, obviously compressed by the violence they endure in this movie, genuinely affecting here.

Mostly, though, this is a movie about the bloody violence and action that fans of the first film will expect, and once again, these sequences are brought to life with no expense spared for the gallons of fake blood that will, over the course of 100 minutes, cover the faces and bodies of the actors. The sequences are also quite funny, because none of the assassins is particularly good at what they’re supposed to do (a gag involving a rocket launcher is a particular highlight). Elijah Wood, by the way, plays a mediator of sorts, credited only as “the Lawyer,” whose polite stoicism about everything that happens here is almost sociopathic in its chilliness.

There’s not much that’s genuinely new in Ready or Not: Here I Come, but there’s plenty that’s wickedly fun in its bloodiness and funny in its absurdity. The finale even offers a wholly subversive twist on the movie’s own rules, resulting in an explosion of blood that dwarfs the climax of the first film, and who isn’t excited after hearing that?

Rating: *** (out of ****)