Ready or Not (2019)
“Do you like to play games?” – Becky
“I guess it depends what we’re playing.” - Grace
Ready or Not (2019)
Directed by: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett
Written by: Guy Busick, R. Christopher Murphy
Starring: Samara Weaving, Adam Brody, Mark O’Brien, Andie MacDowell, Henry Czerny
Riding the wave of The Purge franchise’s box office success over the last decade comes Ready or Not, another graphic hide-and-seek horror thriller. However, unlike other films in the genre, Ready or Not embraces its absurd storyline from the start, with the finished product more of a deranged dark comedy than a horror movie.
The film opens on the wedding day of Grace (Weaving) and Alex Le Domas (O’Brien). Grace is a hopeless romantic, and despite the hostile welcome from Alex’s extremely wealthy family – including his brother Daniel (Brody), mother Becky (MacDowell) and father Tony (Czerny) – she believes that she will now finally be accepted into the fold. However, once the ceremony is over at the Le Domas manor, Grace learns that every new member of the family must play a game. Pulling a card from the deck, Grace soon realises that her game of ‘Hide and Seek’ is a lot more dangerous than she first thought, and is forced to run for her life as the family hunts her down.
Full transparency – I’m writing this review right now and I still don’t know whether I loved or hated the movie. It’s certainly fun, with a bonkers storyline that doesn’t take itself too seriously. However, the writers also seems to have drawn inspiration from about a million different movies, and this has me confused – is this an original masterpiece or a copy-and-paste hack job? In order to talk this through, let’s go through films this has unashamedly taken inspiration from.
The Purge – this one’s pretty hard to argue with. A game of cat-and-mouse, with the wealthy elite hunting the poor and innocent under the ruse of religious sacrifice? Yep. Extremely obvious anti-capitalist social commentary? Yep.
The Hunt - similar to above, The Hunt was actually blocked from release by Trump because he thought the social commentary was too divisive (i.e. he thought the bad guys in the movie were supposed to be Republicans). Rich guys hunting poor people with very clear commentary on social classes. Female heroine overcomes the odds to thwart her attackers.
The Babysitter – A wacky popcorn horror flick with Samara Weaving also in the starring role, this was another dark comedy with a bunch of teenagers hunting a teenage boy in order to sacrifice him to the devil. Familiar combination of absurd violence and quirky humour.
Get Out – A visit to meet a new partner’s family turns into a nightmare as they turn out to be part of a crazy cult. The protagonist must fight to survive and escape their clutches. Features multi-layered social commentary, similar to this.
Saw – This is a stretch, but the gory violence in this is of the same ilk as the ‘torture porn’ violence of the later Saw movies – i.e. people getting shot in the head with a crossbow, crushed in an elevator etc.
Kill Bill – The heroine of the Kill Bill franchise is literally called ‘The Bride’, and the movies feature her revenge tour on those who tried to kill her on her wedding day. Grace in this film is a bride…and people are trying to kill her on her wedding day…and she eventually decides to fight back. Tenuous? Maybe. But I think the Grace character is a pretty obvious homage to Tarantino.
Upon reflection, maybe I’m being too rough on the writers here – taking inspiration from other films is clearly a requirement when writing a script, particularly within the horror genre. So I’ll give them a pass – noting that it probably helps that I like all the movies listed above. Out of the films listed, Ready or Not is probably the most similar to The Babysitter, with almost comical characters making a mockery of extremely grim circumstances (obviously the Samara Weaving link helps too).
So what does this movie do well? Three things - the cast, the start of the movie, and the setting, in that order. The cast is fantastic, with Weaving playing the interchangeably innocent, confused, angry, and aggressive heroine to perfection. Brody puts in a great performance as the conflicted douchebag brother, and Czerny and MacDowell certainly go all out as the psychotic and unhinged parents. The setup (basically the first thirty minutes of the film) is also heaps of fun, with the tension and apprehension for an innocent Grace providing an almost pantomime feel for the movie (pretty sure I yelled “Look out behind you!” at some stage early on). Unfortunately this setup slowly devolves into flat out violence and some messy explanations, but hey, at least the build-up is entertaining. And the setting – the massive Le Domas mansion – is soooo good for this sort of movie. Any movie with people getting trapped in a house and having to outrun/catch a bad guy – I’m in. Give me all the movies like When a Stranger Calls, Scream, The Others, Bad Times at The El Royale, The Hateful Eight, Saw 2 - they’re just fun. And given the Le Domas mansion is enormous, with hidden back passageways and a lot of creepy old weapons hanging on the wall – it truly is ideal for this sort of movie.
Now for the bad – there are so many nitpicks I have with the plot. I know it's a ridiculous premise, and it gets stupider the longer you watch, but there are some pretty clear red flags. [Note, spoilers coming].
First, the absolutely massive plot flaw – if Alex knew this was going to happen, why the fuck would he bring Grace to his family house? Just elope. And if you really can’t get married, just go and live somewhere else without getting married. Play the percentages you muppet.
The movie opens with Alex walking in on Grace practicing her vows literally 30 mins before their wedding. I thought this was a traditional family? And here they are just breaking the oldest wedding tradition ever – don’t see your bride in her wedding dress before the wedding.
All three maids get killed in this film. No matter how rich the Le Domas’ are, the police would still HAVE to follow up on the random disappearance of ALL THREE maids that happened to be working on the same night.
Grace gets a hole literally shot through her hand, gets stabbed multiple times, is involved in a massive car crash, is tranquilised, and is knocked unconscious multiple times, yet she still manages to survive at least six hours without dying of blood loss and walks out of the house at the end. Seems improbable.
Outside of these nitpicks, the jokes in the movie can also be a little hit-and-miss. There’s a lot of lazy jokes about rich people not knowing how to do anything – epitomised by one of the extended family’s husbands having to YouTube ‘How to use a crossbow’ midway through the movie. At the start these jokes hit, but by the hundredth time it’s definitely not as funny. This is true of the violence as well, with the increasingly gruesome maid deaths losing their shock factor and becoming more gross than anything.
So that’s a lot of words to say “I’m still not sure” about Ready or Not. Weaving and the other acting talent injects enough charisma and energy into the film to make you pay attention. However, after a promising start the movie seems to lose its way, with the writers leaning on increased violence and lazy jokes to drag this across the line. If you’re into the genre, I’d recommend that you at least give this movie a go, but it’s probably more of a lazy Sunday/hungover movie that you can watch while scrolling through your Instagram feed.
Rating: 6.5/10
IMDb deepdive:
Weirdly this was a two-director setup (you don’t see that very often). However, the production companies must like it, because these guys have been brought on to direct the upcoming Scream sequel, coming out in 2022. That’s a huge project, which is going to make soooo much money, so is a pretty big deal.
Not really an IMDb fact, but for those who don’t know, Samara Weaving is Hugo Weaving’s niece. Nothing like some of them good acting genes.