2019’s Ready or Not was a breath of fresh air: a simple, savage game of hide and seek that announced not just directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett and producer Chad Villella, the filmmaking team known as Radio Silence, but also star Samara Weaving as exciting talents to watch. Radio Silence and Weaving return with an attempt to recapture the simple magic of the first movie, while also expanding the scope of the storytelling to make room for an international cabal of power players all fighting for the chance to sacrifice their souls to Satan in return for unlimited power. The screaming relevance of satirizing oligarchy in these super chill and totally normal times aside, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come is less a brand new game, and more a stab at seeing how a second round of the same thing plays out. There may be more players and pieces on the board, but it’s an expansion that doesn’t add all that much to the core set.
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come picks up in the immediate aftermath of Grace (Samara Weaving) besting the Le Domas family at their own twisted game. In the vacuum left behind, a handful of other elite families send representatives to battle it out for the right to win “Mr. Le Bail’s favor” or, more plainly, the honor of being Satan’s favorite nepo baby and the unlimited power and wealth associated with said honor. And that battle takes the form of… another round of hide and seek with Grace as the target. Among wealthy competitors played by the likes of Nestor Carbonell, Kevin Durand, and Olivia Cheng, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Shawn Hatosy’s siblings Ursula and Titus Danforth emerge as clear frontrunners, with the homefield advantage of having the game take place on resort grounds owned by their ailing father, Chester Danforth (played by the always most welcome David Cronenberg).
Samara Weaving’s reprisal of Grace is the standout element of Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, and by a wide margin at that. By the end of the first movie, Weaving was channeling some really fun, grounded rage toward how fast her happy ending (literally) disintegrated before her eyes, and the way that momentum is carried into and maintained throughout Here I Come is seriously impressive. It’s a physically and emotionally demanding set of circumstances that Weaving navigates with a ton of energy and enthusiasm, and especially with how familiar Here I Come’s beats start to feel, at times that feels like the only thing keeping the movie from going off the rails. Here I Come’s big move for shaking up Grace’s status quo is the addition of her previously-unmentioned younger sister Faith played with zip by Kathryn Newton, who gets swept into the mix while checking on Grace in the hospital. Newton tempers her natural pluckiness with Faith’s considerable resentment toward Grace over the circumstances of their parting years prior.
With Grace an old pro at hide and seek at this point, Olpin and Gillett use Faith to get a second crack at first reactions to the brutal swings of the game, but the drama between Grace and Faith otherwise falls flat. Faith’s grudge is unconvincingly written and, in its worst moments, leads to frustrating decisions on her part that seem totally out of step with her circumstances. That sibling rivalry is superficially mirrored by the Danforths, but Gellar and Hatosy each feel stranded in roles that call for cool and calculating, but not much else. Like all of the other hunters, the Danforths are there to stand in for all one-percenters using their power to oppress the rest of the world, which is a good place to start for a new crop of villains, but much as it is in our everyday life, that dynamic becomes a tiring metaphor to live in once it becomes clear that Here I Come doesn’t have anything more interesting to say with it.
This new phase of the game is presided over by Elijah Wood’s unnamed Attorney, who’s purely a functionary here but one imbued with a nice, light touch of mischief in the vein of House on Haunted Hill’s Vincent Price or Clue’s Tim Curry performances. The Attorney reads from the comically-large rule book like a Bible, but the foregrounding of arcane rules, twisty politics, and agreements bound in blood by this organization – this High Council – all feel painfully duplicative of John Wick’s High Table, especially as the first film kept these elements mostly relegated to tossed-off asides from the Le Domas family. Rules are, of course, meant to be bent and broken, but Ready or Not 2: Here I Come demonstrates frustrating inconsistency with its willingness to do so. It’s established early on that hunters are only allowed to use weapons from the time period their families made their gambit with “Mr. Le Bail”, but it doesn’t take long to feel like a free-for-all of hunters using whatever’s around to get the job done. The script does make jokes about this – like when the Attorney gives a cheeky “maybe that’s a bad idea” look to one character debating how much to rely on modern technology – but in practice, it feels an aspect of the script Olpin and Gillett are willing to sweep under the rug whenever it becomes inconvenient to the plot.
The decision to model Ready or Not 2: Here I Come’s structure so closely after its predecessor holds this sequel back from feeling surprising or inventive at nearly every turn, forcing Grace into the familiar rhythms of avoiding detection, fighting for her life, and deadpanning about the horrific circumstances she’s just endured in a way that feels like being caught in limbo, but probably not in the way Olpin and Gillett were aiming for. Here I Come does diverge into somewhat new territory for its finale, but it’s only able to get there on the back of a sacrifice Grace makes which feels totally out of step with – at this point – nearly two movies’ worth of character development on her part.
Despite the warmed-over plot, there’s still plenty of fun to be had in the carnage of the game itself. Most of the competitors are pretty inept and cowardly, so there are some big laughs when they fumble with their weapons or decide to screw each other over to protect themselves. Maia Jae’s Francesca scores the movie’s best action set-piece: a messy and hilarious duel with Weaving’s Grace in a ballroom that plays up a satisfying bit of backstory the two share. Olppin and Gillett have quite the knack for infusing action with comedy (something that’ll bode well for their upcoming work on The Mummy 4), and even in stretches where Here I Come feels like it’s repeating its predecessor’s story, the specifics of the various injuries and deaths are often well-pitched. Here I Come does tend to overrely on the spontaneous combustion gag which closed out the last movie with a bang, deploying the goopy explosions pretty freely throughout the movie when it comes time for Mr. Le Bail’s disciples to bite it. Given the vast majority of Ready or Not left the supernatural aspect of the story as an open question, seeing the whole Le Domas family ‘splode was a delightful and earned surprise that becomes a little more tiresome every time it happens in Here I Come.
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