The first Ready or Not came out during the middle of a batch of movies that were yet another variation of “The Most Dangerous Game.” When it opened in late summer 2019, there was a lot of controversy over The Hunt that it could’ve totally overshadowed it.
And then there was the dull The Belko Experiment which felt like a script James Gunn had sold in the 2000s but was in limbo for a decade then pushed into production following the success of the first Guardians of the Galaxy. But Ready or Not was what The Hunt wanted to be because it didn’t take itself too seriously and still had the same socioeconomic themes with a better female lead played by Samara Weaving. Betty Gilpin of The Hunt felt too much like a impersonation of Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor.
The movie was a critical and commercial success despite its small budget. So a sequel was inevitable. But after the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come is a good three years past its due date, especially if all they did was just rehash the same plot but in a different setting.
Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy return as credited writers but the script feels like it was sent through an AI generator. The sequel picks up where the original left off literally with Weaving’s Grace MacCaullay being taken by ambulance to a hospital where she is handcuffed as police want to know what happened. In comes Kathryn Newton as her estranged younger sister, Faith, who seems like every other Gen Zer born around the Y2K era who has a cocky attitude and response to everything thinking she is better than everyone else. These characters keep coming up but they don’t seem the most plausible in real life. Newton is almost 30 and it’s about time she told her agent to reject anymore scripts where she is someone who is 10 years younger.
Also since Grace and Faith are estranged, they spend a lot of time bickering and arguing. So does almost every character in this movie. This is why I saw the movie feels like AI. We’ve seen these characters before in so many other movies. There are crazy eccentric characters who only exist for the purpose of the plot. They’re constantly throwing insults and vulgar quips at each other.
You really don’t care about any of them and just waiting for them to die gruesome deaths or explode as they do when they lose the game. And that’s not a big surprise as it was during the first movie especially since it happens so early and over and over again. You see with the Le Domas family gone, five other families all over the world who control everything have to compete against each other to kill Grace and Faith or else they’ll explode with their blood and body parts going everywhere.
I was bored mainly because the story doesn’t go anywhere. Sarah Michelle Gellar does what she can with the role of Ursula Danforth but we all know her character will die eventually so there’s no mystery. And Shawn Hatosy is her fraternal brother, Titus, who seems like the same characters Hatosy played in his youth before his role on The Pitt gave him more range.
Only Elijah Wood as a “lawyer” for what is the Devil manages to stand out. It’s mostly because Wood has been going after roles and movies to distance himself from his iconic role as Frodo Baggins.
The ending goes nuts but at least it sets up a finale that makes a third Ready or Not less likely.
Zane Says 