Ready or Not 2: Here I Come review: Sarah Michelle Gellar and Shawn Hatosy steal this sequel from Samara Weaving

No question: Ready or Not was a sensational movie. Full of outrageous action sequences and a twisted sense of humor, the 2019 horror comedy from filmmaking collective Radio Silence hit audiences like the gloppy, full-bodied explosions in its climax.

Now, directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett are reteaming with screenwriters Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy and leading lady Samara Weaving for Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, a sequel that’s bigger, bloodier, and even more star-stuffed. This time around, Weaving’s playing opposite Kathryn Newton, David Cronenberg, Elijah Wood, Kevin Durand, Shawn Hatosy, and Sarah Michelle Gellar. And the result is a gnarly winner-takes-all battle that will have audiences howling with shock and laughter. 

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come is a direct sequel to Ready or Not. 

As in, this movie begins exactly where the last one ended, on the steps of the burning Le Domas mansion. Grace Le Domas (née MacCaullay) has survived a deadly game of hide-and-seek against her in-laws, a Satan-worshipping empire of board game scions. She’s won her life, while they all got exploded to gruesome bits by a demon known as Mr. Le Bail. However, game time isn’t over. 

Barely stitched up in a hospital bed, Grace must not only face her estranged younger sister Faith (Newton) and a smirking detective who is investigating the Le Domas deaths, but also a new batch of affluent cultists, ready to play for power. 

An unnamed lawyer (Wood in a bemused Dungeon Master role), explains that because “the bride” survived, the whole of Mr. Le Bail’s High Council families are able to vie for the top seat. A new game of hide-and-seek will commence. If Grace survives the night again, she’ll be the ruler of the cult — and, by extension, much of the world in an evil Illuminati way. But one member from each of the five remaining families can steal that seat by hunting her down and killing her. Naturally, Grace doesn’t want to play. But forcing her sister onto the field assures she’ll do her best to at least get Faith through the night alive. So, let the games begin. 

Double the hunted heroines, double the family drama. 

In Ready or Not, Grace’s backstory was vague, beyond she was drawn to the Le Domas clan because they seemed like the kind of close-knit family she wished she had. A surly introduction of Faith unearths more backstory, but none of it beyond the bounds of cliche. This makes their various squabbles about Grace being a bad sister feel pretty toothless, and even frustrating as they frequently slow down the cat-and-mouse chase of the premise. 

Newton, who made her mark with wacky horror comedies like the slasher body-swap movie Freaky and the campy teen love story Lisa Frankenstein, flails through the first act, shackled by a sulking little sister part. But once Faith get acclimated to this wild Most Dangerous Game world, where the rich hunt humans as a depraved form of fun, Newton is more able to shine. Where Weaving digs into a Sigourney Weaver “Get away from her, you bitch” intensity, Newton snarls with the intensity of an irate Yorkie — peppy, great hair, surprisingly pugnacious. This makes the two a solid double act, whether they’re battling armed heirs and heiresses or scouring an evacuated resort for tools of survival. 

Shawn Hatosy and Sarah Michelle Gellar are devilish fun together in Ready or Not 2: Here I Come. 

While Newton brings frenzied attitude, and Weaving goes gnarlier in this sequel, it’s vintage hotties Shawn Hatosy and Sarah Michelle Gellar who make Ready or Not 2: Here I Come work, playing the Biggest Bads on the golf resort. Cast as twins Ursula (Gellar) and Titus (Hatosy), they must live up to the expectations of their Machiavellian patriarch (Cronenberg). Other ultra-rich baddies and buffoons will enter the fray as well, like the night-club-loving, London-based Rajans (Nadeem Umar-Khitab, Varun Saranga, and Masa Lizdek); the spoiled rotten, Milan-based El Caidos (Néstor Carbonell, Maia Jae, and Juan Pablo Romero); the lawyered-up, Shanghai-based Wan Chens (Olivia Cheng and Antony Hall); and the cocaine-fueled Atlantic City family run by Bill Wilkinson (Kevin Durand). 

Each of these supporting players brings new energy that creates a thrilling chaotic atmosphere. But no matter what weapons or killer fashion flourishes the others wield, Titus and Ursula are the scariest. Part of that is the dissonant breeziness with which they commit to the disruptive and even devilish business at hand to ready for the games. Watching the twins be so cavalier in moments of murder and mayhem is thrillingly chilling. But more than that, Gellar and Hatosy carry added weight for Gen Xers and elder millennials, who remember them from such beloved horror offerings as the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series and The Faculty. 

There’s an undeniable exhilaration in seeing Gellar bring back that toxic rich-girl energy from Cruel Intentions, curdled here into a devilish, poised opportunist. By contrast, Hatosy has had fans of The Pitt swooning over his Dr. Abbot, who altruistically bends the rules to do the best for his patients and casually flashes his pecs for some welcome eye-candy in the stressful ER setting. In Ready or Not 2, he begins as a cocky oaf who serves as a sort of attack dog for his brainy twin. But as the MacCaullay sisters scurry through the night, narrowly avoiding death again and again, Hatosy’s beefy arms become more than a sexy spectacle as they’re flexed as weapons in one truly shocking sequence after another. At its SXSW premiere, these scenes earned gasps and gulps from a jolted audience.

Ready or Not 2 goes harder than the original. 

With the first film, Radio Silence delivered brutal blows onto Grace, which were all the more shocking because she was running around in a lace wedding dress and yellow Converse sneakers. Focusing on the infliction of specific injuries made the audience squeal and wince to sensational effect. But for the sequel, violence will come in forms more inventive and visually repulsive than the plentiful gunshot wounds of the original. Plus, with new rules in play that can get a family disqualified, there’ll be fatal, fleshy explosions throughout the film, not just in the climax. 

Like in the first film, some of this violence is grisly fun, utilizing accidental slayings, unexpected means of violence, and a dueling bride fight for a bit of ghoulish levity amid the murders. But Gillett and Bettinelli-Olpin seem to channel their Scream/Scream VI energy in two particular sequences, where the violence goes from joking to genuinely shocking. This makes the stakes of the climax hit differently. The playfulness of the game, the thrill of the chase is mercilessly cut down for a big swing of an ending that’s proved polarizing out of the film’s SXSW world premiere. 

Without spoilers, I’ll admit to being conflicted. Part of me admires Radio Silence going so far afield from the first film for a third act that delivers much more darkness than macabre laughs. And the other part of me pined for a final act that kept up the energy, rather than suffocating it for a bleaker tone. This shift puts the twins in the driver seat, rather than Grace. And while that is exciting, it means the ending feels a bit out of place, even as it delivers exactly what fans of the first film might crave most.

Still, I don’t think many fans will find this sequel better than the first. However, the first one had the advantage of being so original that fans had no expectations going in. That’s the curse and the inherent paradox of the sequel, which is expected to do more than the first film did, but still satisfy in the same ways.

To the credit of Radio Silence, they do deliver on star power, dizzying gore, a higher body count, and big swigs in terms of plot and major tonal shifts. Not all of these gambles pay off. Yet Ready or Not 2: Here I Come is a winner when it comes to being a totally batshit good time. 

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come was reviewed out of SXSW. The film opens in theaters March 20.

​Mashable