Ready or Not 2: Here I Come picks up right where its predecessor left off, with Grace (Samara Weaving) surviving an all-out attack from the Le Domas family and making her way outside of their burning estate. She’s placed under arrest while recovering in the hospital for suspicion of arson and murder when her estranged sister, Faith (Kathryn Newton) comes to the hospital as her next of kin to be by her side. While there, Grace soon discovers that after killing the Le Domas’, she’s reached the next level of the nightmarish game played by the Satanic cult at which they sat as the High Seat of the Council and thus controlled the world. Grace must now play the deadly game of hide and seek again against the reminding four families of the council, this time with Faith by her side. And if she survives again, she will become the High Seat.
This sequel comes after the first movie became a surprise hit both commercially and critically, earning almost ten times its budget at the box office. Such success guarantees that the team behind the movie will get another bite at the apple to try to replicate that success, and, the profit for the movie studio. That motivation behind returning to the well can be felt throughout Ready or Not 2 to the film’s detriment. Everything you may have enjoyed about its predecessor is here, explosive, bloody deaths, depraved elites hunting Grace (and now Faith) with a good amount of comedy mixed in, but that is all that is mostly present. Not much new is added to the film in favor of sticking with what’s worked and what’s familiar. There is an attempt at world building by expanding the number of Satanist elites and revealing it to be an entire cult running the world, but the new addition doesn’t expand beyond that. Compare it to a franchise like John Wick where layers were slowly peeled back and revealed that expanded that world in interesting fresh ways, homeless people as undercover assassins, international bureaus, blood markers, and a host more that added new things and posed new questions that interested audiences in delving deeper into the world through more movies. A boilerplate Illuminati is not a new concept that inspires greater curiosity in a viewer or makes a film feel like it’s expanding upon what came before rather than rehashing it.
Ready or Not 2 also tries to both expand its scope and add depth through the introduction of Faith as Grace’s estranged sister. While Weaving and Newton do display good chemistry together and believably portray a pair of sisters with complicated feelings for each other, and the addition of an additional protagonist allows for more intricate fights and chases that up the ante for the action, the emotional beats aren’t strong enough to elevate the film as a whole. Instead, they come across as just another surface level addition to the film with the focus remaining on rehashing the elements that audiences loved in the previous film, thus also regenerating that same goodwill.
Don’t get me wrong, Ready or Not 2 is not a bad time at the movies. The concept of a human hunting game is almost as old as film itself and has inspired numerous classic movies. That concept still works here with the franchise’s mix of gore, comedy, and a horror final girl in Samara Weaving who is just as magnetic and easy to root for as she was in the first film. Past those elements we’ve already seen and enjoyed however, the movie adds nothing new and at times feels like a rehash stretched thin to justify another attempt at a hit, particularly during the last 20 minutes. You won’t be disappointed if you go to the theaters to watch it per se, but you may be left wondering what the point of it all was.
Image: Searchlight Pictures
