Official Trailer
Rating: 7.7/10 | Genre: Thriller, Horror, Comedy | Runtime: 108 min
Starring: Samara Weaving, Kathryn Newton, Elijah Wood, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shawn Hatosy
Ready or Not: Here I Come is basically what happens when you take the first movie’s insane premise and decide to go bigger, messier, and somehow funnier about it. Grace is back, and this time her estranged sister Faith gets dragged into the nightmare. If you liked the first one, you’ll probably have a good time with this sequel. If you haven’t seen it, you can probably jump in anyway since the movie does a decent job catching you up.
The setup is that Grace has to survive another round of the game, but now it’s not just the Le Domas family hunting her. There are four other families competing for control of this shadowy council that apparently runs the world. So instead of one crazy family, you’ve got multiple factions all trying to kill Grace and her sister Faith to claim some supernatural power. It’s escalation for the sake of it, but it works because the movie knows exactly what it is.
Samara Weaving is really the backbone of this thing. She’s got the perfect balance of exhausted, terrified, and pissed off that the role needs. There’s a moment early on where she just sits down and laughs at how absurd everything has become, and you can feel her character’s breaking point. Kathryn Newton is solid as Faith, though her character feels a bit undercooked compared to what the marketing promised. She’s there, she reacts to things, but she doesn’t get as much meat as you’d hope.
Elijah Wood shows up as one of the rival family members and he’s clearly having fun with it. There’s a scene where he’s trying to explain the politics of this secret world to Grace while they’re both covered in blood and it’s weirdly one of the movie’s best moments. Sarah Michelle Gellar is in this too, and honestly, her presence made me wish she had more screen time. She’s barely in it.
What Works
The action is creative. The first movie had fun kills and traps, and this one continues that tradition. There’s one sequence involving a library that’s genuinely inventive. The pacing in the middle stretch is also really solid. It moves fast enough that you don’t have time to question the logic too hard, which is important when you’re watching a movie about families hunting each other for supernatural council positions.
The comedy lands way more often than it doesn’t. There are some big laugh-out-loud moments that come from character reactions rather than jokes being spelled out. The tone manages to be goofy without being silly in a way that kills the tension. That’s harder to pull off than it sounds.
What Doesn’t
The worldbuilding in the second half gets confusing. Once they start explaining the council, the different families, and how the power structure works, it gets tangled. The movie rushes through exposition that honestly could have been clearer. I wasn’t always sure who was allied with who or what people actually wanted.
Faith as a character doesn’t quite work. The whole point is that she’s supposed to be important to the story, but she spends most of the movie being protected or getting in the way. There’s this backstory about why they’re estranged that gets dropped in without enough weight to it. By the time the movie tries to make you care about their relationship, it feels forced.
The runtime is 108 minutes and honestly it could have been tighter. There’s some padding in the second act where scenes run a bit long. The movie doesn’t need to show every setback or moment of characters running through hallways. A few cuts here and there would have kept the energy up.
The Bottom Line
Ready or Not: Here I Come is a fun ride that doesn’t overstay its welcome too badly. It’s not as sharp or surprising as the first movie, but it’s still entertaining if you’re in the mood for something that doesn’t take itself seriously. The action is creative, Weaving is great, and there are genuine laughs. It stumbles when it tries to get serious about the plot, but it bounces back quick.
It’s the kind of movie that works better if you go in just wanting to watch people try to murder each other in creative ways rather than hunting for a deep story. If that sounds like your kind of time, go see it. Did the sequel manage to capture what made the first movie work for you, or do you think it lost something by going bigger?
Where to Watch
Rent on: Amazon Video, Apple TV Store, Fandango At Home, CosmoGo
Buy on: Google Play Movies, YouTube, Rakuten TV, Sky Store