Ready or Not 2: Here I Come

4 outta 5

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come is very similar to the first film where it ups the carnage and adds more well-known actors to the mix. It isn’t exactly a lazy copy and paste of the original film as there are a lot of new twists here. This builds out the lore of the original film, and delivers more inventive and fast paced carnage that gleefully unfolds and some really fun performances. It may be a hunt to the death, but it is a blast to watch.

After Grace (Samara Weaving) survived a deadly game of hide and seek and attempted ritual sacrifice by her new in-laws on her wedding night, she has been taken to the hospital. The cops think she had something to do with the carnage, and the only person who shows up to her bedside is her emergency contact, her estranged sister, Faith (Kathryn Newton). Someone else also shows up and abducts her; a lawyer (Elijah Wood) for the shadowy cabal of powerful figures who control the world and also have a penchant for Satanic worship and human sacrifice. The lawyer tells Grace that she must once again survive until dawn with a game of hide and seek. She is being hunted by the cabal, and whoever kills her gets to lead, or if she survives she will lead. The main duo who are hunting her are the brother and sister, Ursula (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Titus (Shawn Hatosy) Danforth. Their father (David Cronenberg) was the leader of the group until he was smothered to death by his children, increasing their odds they will win the contest. The head of each of the rich families is trying to kill Grace, and if one of them dies the next in line will have to take their place. Now Grace has to fight for her life and also keep her sister alive as well.

The first film ends very neatly. The twist that the family game of hide and seek is actually a way to please Satan is really crazy and the ending where the curse is real and the family all explodes is a total banger. If you don’t do what Mr. Le Bail, Satan, wants, you get exploded. So this movie is free to pull off that trick a few times as several of the cabal break the rules and then blow up like a blood balloon. Maybe a bit lazy to repeat the best moment of the last film, but the splatter is absolutely fantastic. There is a moment when the people watching the hunt end up with some folks who explode, and the funniest part is the slow reaction of Wood’s lawyer who hides to avoid getting splattered. One of the viewers, realizing this is going to happen a lot, asks for a poncho.

Weaving as the final girl yet again has an absolutely crazy shriek whenever she gets going with the violence or pain. Grace is basically entirely worn out from her experience and the fact she has to do it again enrages her. She gets to come up with some cool ideas to get out of her predicament and her actions in the finale causes mucho chaos and is very cathartic. Newton has a few funny moments when she is so incredibly bitter towards her estranged sister and keeps coming up with excuses why her life is better. But their eventual reconciliation via incredible amounts of gore and violence is actually quite heartfelt. As the lawyer, Wood is exceptionally professional as he lays out the intricate rules of deals with the Devil. The brother and sister are sociopaths. Gellar’s Ursula seems very methodical and Hatosy’s Titus gets progressively more unhinged. The two of them smothering their father is twisted as Cronenberg plays it as annoyed they aren’t going through with it faster. He spends his entire scene sitting in a bed, and it shows how powerful his position is when he ends a global conflict by just placing a phone call. For a brief role from a Canadian horror director icon, he certainly leaves an impact.

The best bits are the splatter scenes and the various quips the cabal members make. A bunch don’t take anything seriously, and when one of the family members is killed, in a very inventive and gruesome scene involving an industrial clothes washer, another one immediately sells out his wife and lets her go hunting instead. There’s rules that the hunters can’t kill each other so when Grace manipulates it so one kills another, it breaks the rules so they explode, including the completely oblivious kid who has his face stuck in a videogame. Nestor Carbonell plays Ignacio El Caido who natters to himself in Spanish and has a sniper rifle that he isn’t very good at using for some fun bits. There’s also a really brutal fight that Grace has with an old girlfriend of her late husband that involves a rocket launcher and pop music that gets really messy.

This isn’t as inventive as the first movie, and by adding this giant secret society is stretching to add more to the plot, but it once again nails it in one liners, gore and Satan enabled splatter. This is a twisted and funny movie that keeps things lively.