‘Ready or Not 2: Here I Come’ Review: Even Samara Weaving’s Primal Rage Can’t Make This Game Interesting
Even with an amped up body count and world-ending stakes, director Matt Bettinelli-Olpin’s and Tyler Gillett’s (known collectively as Radio Silence) “Ready or Not 2: Here I Come” feels like a case of diminishing returns.
Like a card game whose complicated rules you instantly forget when it’s explained to you, this maximalist follow-up to the original 2019 film gets hollower the more it expands in scope. It’s not just more of the same, but most of the same, and while there will always be a baseline thrill of seeing wealthy capitalists get their bloody comeuppance, this might just be the most stodgy of that cathartic subgenre. As has been the case with many a horror project she’s been a part of in the past, Samara Weaving’s guttural screams can cover a multitude of sins, but even her fully embodied performance and powers can’t save a movie that mistakes stilted recurrence for high-octane throwback. It feels like a beautiful remaster of a game we know too well, as if the duo decided that with a bigger budget and cast, they could remake their first movie the way they originally wanted to.
The guts are on display (not just from the bodies that explode) in the first frames of the film, in that Radio Silence starts this sequel right in the middle of the first film’s ending. We see Grace MacCaullay (Weaving) emerge from the burning house of her former in-laws, the Le Domas’, her wedding dress drenched with multiple people’s blood, while lighting a cigarette. It’s an iconic closing shot, and for Radio Silence to expand on perfection requires a deal of trust in its audience and story: Grace could have had her happy ending seven years ago, so if she’s going to be tormented yet again, hopefully the story concocted is worthy of robbing her peace.
When Grace’s estranged sister, Faith (Kathryn Newton), visits her, the two are quickly thrust back into the hellscape that Grace thought she had successfully crawled out of. The Le Domas were a part of a Capitalist Satanic cult, and their deaths at the hands of Grace triggered an unfortunate bylaw in their cult’s rules: the other families in the cult have the opportunity to kill Grace (and now Faith), and whoever wins becomes, in effect, a god on Earth. Should the families fail, they risk not only losing their wealth, status and fortunes but seeing their entire bloodlines be culled in explosive fashion.
Frankly stated, a movie about two sisters having to fight a coterie of inept demon worshippers who can combust at any point should be a lot more fun, and Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett seem unsure of how to keep the story compelling between each gnarly set piece. Once Faith and Grace are let go on the sprawling property where they’ve been captured, the film shows its hand to be nothing more than to be pleased with replaying the hits of the first, with the physically outmatched Grace and Faith having to use their street smarts and surroundings to dispatch elites who make up for their lack of prowess with better resources. There’s a humorous cosmic level to Grace’s and Faith’s battle, to the point where it’s almost disappointing the members of the family aren’t named Avarice, Greed or Cryptocurrency. It’s the type of narrative flourish that might have signified a facetiousness that is instead swapped with a self-serious dourness.
This is a film with too many players and not enough interesting things to do between them all, and it’s hard to get invested in the rich red shirts because we know that they’ll be quickly dispatched, which means the characters are reduced down to their most basic personalities. Néstor Carbonell as Ignacio El Caido, head of the family of Spain, shines the most, given his pairing of braggadocio and ineptitude; he prances around the golf course firing a high-caliber rifle with abandon, indicative of self-delusions of grandeur that the wealthy often think of themselves, and how such pride is what leads them to their downfall. His daughter, Francesca El Caido (Maia Jae), gets another moment to shine, offering a riff on the vengeful ex trope, and is more than able to hold her own against Weaving, particularly in a hilarious fight scene where both are pepper-sprayed and cannot see each other while exchanging blows. Sarah Michelle Gellar and Shawn Hatosy play Ursula and Titus Danforth, the sole heirs of the Danforth family, who recently held the throne, and their dynamic is slippery, combustive and volatile, darkly mirroring that of Weaving and Newton’s characters.
Their relationship is a foil to Weaving and Newton’s characters, but the latter’s relationship never quite clicks into place, even if there are dedicated moments where the characters discuss their backstories. Weaving knows how to take a hit and dish one, but she’s allowed to tap into something more primal and tragic in that she’s experienced a trauma that no one else can relate to. Newton, for her part, is a breath of fresh air, projecting a sardonic and stoic front even while we can see the latent pain of having been abandoned by Grace creep out from behind her steely eyes. They’re both talented, but their moments of connection are reduced to the moments in between being hunted, which makes their dynamic feel rushed and underdeveloped.
Like anyone who has played hide and seek knows, if you’ve hidden too well to avoid capture, there comes a point where the thrill of not being caught is swiftly replaced with a desire to simply be found, the longer the game goes on. In many ways, that experience encapsulates “Ready or Not 2: Here I Come,” which starts intriguing but ultimately becomes maddening.
To get Biblical for a moment, Radio Silence understands that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, that the people who run this world traffic in such cruelties as to feel like the Devil themselves. Their film is a grisly, sharpened vessel to hold their rage and a vehicle for empathy for those who feel that sometimes it’s easier to join the system than to fight it. It’s admirable, but to riff on the Apostle Paul, perhaps for Round 3, they’d be better off knowing that the love of repetition is the root of all kinds of boredom.
“Ready or Not 2: Here I Come” opens exclusively in theaters on March 20.
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