Ready or Not 2: Here I Come

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, the filmmakers known as Radio Silence, sure enjoy watching a body pop like a firecracker in a water balloon. Their 2019 release, Ready or Not, ended with an explosive finale when the protagonist, Grace (Samara Weaving), having survived a horrifying night with her murderous, satanic in-laws, watched the remaining few blow up into a splattery mess. They made a deal with the devil, called Le Bail, and because they failed to deliver, he made them go boom in a comically shocking moment. Radio Silence also directed Abigail (2024), about a group of kidnappers trapped in a mansion with a vampire ballerina. When the vampires in that movie die, they explode, akin to the Satanists from Ready or Not. As expected, even more bodily detonations occur in Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, a sequel that’s arguably gorier than any of their previous work. Instead of a climactic bang, the movie features these bloody bursts throughout, relying on them like a juicy punchline. 

Maybe that’s part of why the follow-up feels a little less distinct. Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett’s earlier efforts mentioned above gradually build toward their bloody climaxes. In Ready or Not 2, the escalation is less dramatic, lending the movie a heightened quality throughout. Apart from a few exposition-heavy dialogue sequences and some tender bonding scenes between sisters, the sequel can feel somewhat devoid of tonal variation. Multiple sequences feature red goregasms or Weaving screaming with guttural defiance, putting the whole movie at an extreme register. When there’s so much that’s over-the-top, the viewer becomes desensitized. The blood and guts cease to be a gag and turn into white noise. Fortunately, the screenplay, written by the original’s Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy, instills enough humor and surprising heart to justify its existence. 

The sequel opens where the earlier movie left off, with the Le Domas family dead. Their latest addition, Grace (Weaving), sits on the steps outside their burning estate, smoking a cigarette. After she married into the wealthy board-game family the day before, they demanded that she play a game. At random, she selected Hide-and-Seek from several options, the only game with deadly consequences, requiring her new family to hunt her down before daybreak. If they had succeeded, Le Bail would have be pleased. But they failed. And now they’re in puddles. Grace recovers in the hospital and fields questions from a detective who suspects her of arson and murder, convinced she’s doomed. She’s visited by her estranged sister, Faith (Kathryn Newton), who’s still upset that Grace abandoned her with their foster parents years earlier. Grace tries to explain everything, but Faith doesn’t believe her. 

It’s not until they both end up gassed and wake up gagged and bound in a lavish, secluded estate that Faith understands the stakes. Several other families devoted to Le Bail have arrived for a ceremony designed to establish a new head of The Council—an organization of bazillionaires that supposedly runs the world—overseen by the organization’s lawyer (Elijah Wood). The Le Domases headed The Council before, and now that they’re all dead, the next leader will be decided by whoever hunts down Grace and Faith first. Several other contractual wrinkles emerge, such as the possibility that they might survive the ordeal or even marry into one of the other families to save their lives. But for much of the 108-minute runtime, the sisters, who start out handcuffed to each other like the heroes in Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (1935), run for their lives against several well-armed, devil-worshipping elitists.

Chief among the competitors are the scheming Ursula (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and the sadistic Titus Danforth (Shawn Hatosy), siblings whose father, Chester (David Cronenberg), sacrificed himself so they could claim their spot. The others come from all over the world. The last time they met was in 1963 (the year real-life Satanist Anton LaVey began holding meetings of the Magic Circle, which would become the Church of Satan in 1966, the same year of Time magazine’s iconic “Is God Dead?” cover). After signing a contract in blood and gathering an arsenal of weaponry, the hunters chase after their quarry on the estate’s golf course. There’s a rogues’ gallery of killers represented, and there’s plenty of infighting among their ranks. Most of them meet a gnarly end, such as the guy Grace locks inside an industrial washing machine on the sanitize setting, only to come out looking like the toxic waste victim in RoboCop (1987). 

Ready or Not 2 does plenty that a good horror sequel should: it raises the stakes and body count; it’s gorier and goopier; it expands the mythology. There’s even more variation in the visual approach. Whereas its predecessor had an amber-hued palette for its interior scenes, the sequel’s cinematographer, Brett Jutkiewicz, has a wider variety of locations to work with, from lush green exteriors to a stately library to a gloomy secret ceremonies room—each given convincing detail by production designer Andrew Stear. The funniest sequence takes place in a splashy wedding reception hall, where two women blinded by pepper spray swing at each other aimlessly. Less amusing is the beating Titus delivers to Faith late in the movie, which borders on unbearable to watch. As the co-lead, Newton is superb and comes across as more grounded and less arch than Weaving, who always looks elvish and exaggerated (perhaps because of who her uncle is). No stranger to the genre (see Abigail and 2020’s Freaky), Newton’s presence gives Weaving more to do than function in survival mode. 

What the movie lacks in originality or variation, it makes up for with its satisfying eat-the-rich theme. When stories about the so-called Epstein class—and in particular their lack of accountability in the United States compared to other countries—saturate our news cycle, there’s a basic catharsis in seeing the corrupt super-rich receive their comeuppance. And it’s particularly satisfying to see retribution delivered by two former foster children whom the Satanists refer to with dehumanizing pronouns such as “it” or “thing.” Even so, if the filmmakers decide to continue this series, here’s hoping they change the formula enough so it doesn’t merely feel like a bigger, bloodier version of the original. On those terms, Ready or Not 2 delivers. But those expecting something groundbreaking or new may feel slight disappointment, even while being amply diverted.