Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come: Movie Review

Cast: Samara Weaving, Kathryn Newton, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shawn Hatosy, Elijah Wood, Nestor Carbonell
Director: Tyler Gillett, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin

The 2019 original Ready Or Not was a bloody blast.

A fresh idea on the horror genre that also satirised the idea of in-laws and marriage, it offered a wave of originality and gore while delivering a complete story about Samara Weaving's Grace and her descent into hell.

So a second film faced a problem from the start - with everything wrapped up, there was only the lore to expand and the gore quotient to be upped to ensure that this feels like something different from the first.

Unfortunately, despite an extremely strong performance from Weaving as the clearly traumatised Grace, Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come never quite gains the pace of the first film - or the smarts.

Picking up just moments after Grace has burnt down her past encounter and survived the game of hide and seek until dawn, she's reunited with her sister Faith (Newton) whom she abandoned seven years ago. Bitter about each other's treatment, the pair is kidnapped by a group of Satanists who want to seize the power vacuum left by Grace's murderously protective spree and take control of the High Seat, which Grace's in-laws previously controlled.

It's all a McGuffin really for six new families to try and hunt Grace and Faith down, while the two sisters bicker and quarrel their way through their issues.

The problem with Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come is that after the first 30 minutes or so, the movie loses steam and becomes repetitive, hitting the same beats and delivering the same human blood-sack explosions that the first did. But this becomes a case of diminishing returns, given how predictable the story devolves and how tiresome it gets.

One sole sequence that shines involves a wronged bride, a wedding reception and pepper spray. That, coupled with Bonnie Tyler's anthem, marks the film's only moment of originality - a brutal, funny and cleverly executed set-piece in among a sea of indifference.

And there's an incredible amount of uncomfortable brutality against the women in this film. Every punch they receive, every kick they're given - they all land with painful edges and feel a little like the filmmakers are overegging their desire to inflict pain. Netwon alone receives such a beating at one point that it feels like a flashback to Maddie Palmer's death in Twin Peaks in its nastiness.

None of this is to detract from Weaving's performance throughout. Despite the sisters-reunited subplot never really hanging together, she's fierce, frightened, broken and occasionally hopeful as she wearily accepts what's going on and how to survive it.

A lack of real villains in the piece - other than Gellar and Hatosy's twins, most of the menace feels like an amorphous blob waiting to be punctuated by a bloody self-explosion - also cripples proceedings with the well-defined antagonists of the first film feeling like an afterthought.

When it comes down to it, Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come struggles for a true raison d'etre. Viewed simply as a sequel that's become necessary because of the cult success of the first, it struggles to get out of its own circle of hell - and because of that, at times, this feels like an unwelcome visit to cinematic hell.