Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s Ready or Not 2 picks up immediately where the first film left off: with Samara Weaving’s Grace, covered in blood, smoking on the steps of a burning mansion as she murmurs that her Satan-worshipping in-laws were to blame. Grace collapses and she’s resuscitated in an ambulance, handcuffed.
Like Grace’s dead husband, however, the opening sequence makes promises it can’t quite keep. The first film was little more than a big, bloody game of hide and seek, but it was elevated by a scathing characterization of the mega-rich, their concepts of love and matrimony, and the pettiness keeping them alive. There’s some of that in the sequel, but it’s nowhere near as sharp or meaningful, and it’s a far more shallow experience as a result.
Ready or Not 2’s high point comes right after that opening sequence, when the Danforth family’s ailing patriarch (David Cronenberg in a perfect, glowering cameo) gives his final marching orders to his children, Ursula and Titus (Sarah Michelle Gellar and Shawn Hatosy). The death of the Le Domas family in the first film creates a power vacuum in the Satanic World Order, and Ursula and Titus gather all of the world’s most powerful families for a new game of hide and seek to claim the High Seat of their little cabal. That game again involves hunting Grace, who’s abducted along with her estranged sister Faith (Kathryn Newton).
There’s a crackle and energy to the film’s first act as we catch a timely glimpse of a world ruled by generational elites. The patriarchs have grown self-satisfied with their own power and have passed none of it on to their hilariously stunted children, which becomes a problem when the kids are forced to go hunting for Grace and Faith in their parents’ stead.
A specific fight involving pepper spray, an abandoned wedding, and Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” is one of Ready or Not 2’s standout moments, but the film doesn’t take full advantage of its premise or thoroughly game cast: Kathryn Newton tries her damndest to match Weaving’s freak, countering the latter’s delightfully over-it-all line deliveries and frazzled energy with her own. Ultimately, however, Ready or Not 2 is just a retread of things that the first film pulled off with far more deliciously cartoonish energy.
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