Ready or Not 2 – Here I Come Dir: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett (13th Floor Film Review)
Ready or Not 2 – Here I Come is directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, and written by Guy Busic it is a direct sequel to Ready or Not (2019).
Starring Samara Weaving, Kathryn Newton, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shawn Hatosy, David Cronenberg, and Elijah Wood.
Hard on the heels of The Bride comes the return of another bride: Samara Weaving’s feisty Grace MacCaullay, the final girl from 2019’s gory fun-fest Ready or Not.
My companion for the screening expressed some concern about not having seen the original. I assured her it would be fine; whilst secretly hoping I wasn’t telling porkies.
Luckily for us both, about five minutes in the arrival of Grace’s estranged sister Faith (Kathryn Newton) prompts a recap that makes prior viewing largely unnecessary.
“Exposition,” I hiss at my mate, as a hospitalised Grace catches her little sister up on the wedding—with a side of post-nuptial homicidal Satanism that Faith missed due to the whole estrangement.
Meanwhile, dark forces are gathering—as they do. It turns out the Le Domas family weren’t the only absurdly wealthy clan in league with old mate Beelzebub, and their bloody demise has left a vacancy at the top of the Satan-worshippers’ org chart. The remaining five families must now compete to see who gets to wear the ring of power and, quite literally, run the world.
That ring reference may or may not be an Easter egg, given the addition of Elijah Wood as “the Lawyer”, keeper of a very large book of rules and intermediary between the players and their diabolical benefactor, Mr Le Bail.
The secret to claiming the ultimate prize lies in apologising profusely to Grace and paying reparations to the families of all the goats sacrificed in the name of world domination.
Just kidding. They have to kill the bride before dawn. Again.
This latest plot device neatly allows for a brand-new multinational cast of villains. Standouts include Sarah Michelle Gellar and Shawn Hatosy as evil twins Ursula and Titus Danforth, who murder their father Chester (David Cronenberg) at his own behest to ensure the Danforth family fields the strongest possible team.
Returning briefly to the hospital, the sisters—mid-argument over who wronged whom most—are kidnapped and whisked to a country club owned by the Danforth clan. Not before Grace pauses mid-chase to change back into her iconic blood-stained wedding dress and yellow sneakers, because the hospital gown simply isn’t the look.
They soon learn, courtesy of “Frodo” (sorry, Elijah—I can’t stop), that it’s about to be Groundhog Day all over again. This time it’s double or nothing, as Grace and Faith are inconveniently joined at the wrist.
Also vying for bride-bagging bragging rights (and total world domination) are Grace’s former husband’s ex-fiancée Francesca (Maia Jae) and a collection of unhinged representatives from the five families. To be fair, most of Grace and Faith’s adversaries look like they couldn’t hit water if they fell out of a boat, so it’s no surprise when the sisters dispatch several of them in short order.
While Gellar and Hatosy chew the scenery with villainous glee, the rest of the cast deliver suitably OTT performances and make the most of their (sometimes brief) screen time.
Weaving is once again in her element as a kick-arse final girl. Grace’s fury blazes across the screen —and who can blame her? Once should really be enough when it comes to being relentlessly hunted by Satanists.
Newton proves a worthy addition to the franchise and shares genuine chemistry with Weaving, even if some of their bickering sounds like it was written by a couple of blokes (which, let’s be honest, it was).
But you don’t come to this film for the dialogue—you come for the blood-soaked mayhem, the cartoonishly nasty characters and (spoiler alert) a last-second goat save that I was extremely pleased about.
Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett deliver another thoroughly entertaining slice of comedy-horror. It doesn’t quite recapture the unhinged brilliance of the original, but it knows exactly what it is and leans into it with gleeful abandon. If a third instalment is on the cards, here’s hoping it sharpens the knife and surprises us all over again.
Jo Barry
Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come is in cinema now. Click here for showtimes and tickets
