Ready or Not 2: Here I Come

Come the end of directing duo Matt-Bettinelli Olpin and Tyler Gillett (known professionally as Radio Silence)’s surprise 2019 breakout hit Ready or Not, star Samara Weaving stared into the middle distance, dressed in wedding white and a hearty coating of blood, a cigarette lit in tandem with the mansion going up in flames behind her. When an exasperated police officer asks what fresh hell got her to this point, her curt response sends us into the credits, and Olpin and Gillett to new levels of cult genre infamy for years to come: “In-laws.”

Irreverent, splashy, and smirkingly set to Stereo Jane’s rollicking cover of Love Me Tender, this capstone on a pleasingly nasty eat-the-rich corpse pile-up set the precedent for Olpin and Gillett’s subsequent big studio work. The sensibility held strong through two, franchise-reviving Scream instalments, and again when the pair pivoted with the cheeky vampire flick Abigail. Now, with nary a beat skipped, the fiery baptism of Weaving’s blood-spattered bride launches their homecoming, a briskly enjoyable, “more is more” follow-up that leads with the cavalier chutzpah of an assortment of showmen who are more than content to just make it up as they go along.

One scrappy, resourceful heroine battling her way through throngs of devil-worshipping billionaires? Try two, with Kathryn Newton now on hand as Weaving’s long-estranged, never-before-mentioned onscreen sister. Abrupt, much? Just go with it. A single evil old money dynasty to battle? Try four, now competing in a Hunger Games-ian death match for the top prize of global domination. Might or might not there be an actual supernatural component to all this? Olpin and Gillett are cheerfully unserious enough that it could easily go either way, with little disruption to the tone of the thing. And would it be a sequel at all without an exasperated cry of “This can’t be happening again!” Ready or Not 2 is here to deliver more of the same in bigger fashion, and fortunately, its cast is game enough, its pace snappy enough, and returning writers Guy Busick and R Christopher Murphy’s screenplay loose and playful enough to meet its modest ambitions. It also doesn’t hurt that its directors’ proudly juvenile delight in the splatter-y spectacle of exploding bodies is still going strong.

Having slain her fiancée and the entirety of his murderous family, Weaving’s Grace MacCauley is barely permitted a rest before being promptly helicoptered over to another sprawling estate to flee from a new assortment of psychos. Among them are Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shawn Hatosy, Nestor Carbonell and a delectably deadpan Elijah Wood, who drops lines like “The winner will be coronated in the Black Temple” and “Hail Satan!” in the anodyne tones of an accountant having an especially long day at the office. Still, Newton’s presence as a bickering partner in battle is the most significant new addition, and Olpin and Gillett put some amount of effort into infusing the newly materialised, fraught family history between the two sisters with emotional gravity. In all honesty, they needn’t have bothered. Ready or Not 2 is fleet and featherlight, and its inert attempts at human drama only serve to bloat the length from the 80-ish minutes it ought to be to a slightly overextended 108. Luckily, a new set-piece is never far behind the next corner, with top marks going to an extended brawl set, tackily but satisfyingly, to Total Eclipse of the Heart.

Ultimately, while Radio Silence’s return to the surprise hit that made their name never makes the case for itself as necessary, that’s ultimately part of its charm. Anything goes in this cheerfully silly romp, which is only ever weighed down by strained attempts at having a heart. With slick confidence like this, what need is there for one?