Directed By Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett

Starring – Samara Weaving, Kathryn Newton, Elijah Wood

The Plot – After surviving one deadly game, Grace (Weaving) and her sister Faith (Newton) must now outrun four rival families competing for a powerful throne, winner takes all bloodbath

Rated R for strong bloody violence, gore, pervasive language and brief drug use.

READY OR NOT 2: HERE I COME | Official Trailer | Searchlight Pictures

POSITIVES

As perplexing as it feels to the parameters of reality, it’s been seven years since the first movie orchestrated a brutally barbaric game of hide and seek to correspond thematically to the ruthlessly disparaging depths of blind marriage, and while that trail-blazing breakthrough hit for Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett didn’t necessarily open itself up to a sequel, on account of its concrete ending, the dynamic directorial duo do more than enough to justify a secondary installment to this emerging franchise, particularly in the expansion of its economic world-building, which proves that this satanic entity extends far beyond Grace’s now deceased in-laws. While incorporating a series of new powerful families to combat for the world’s power certainly revels in this all-encompassing criteria for what pushes the proverbial scope even further, it’s also their immeasurable effects on society that are thoroughly documented during the opening act, where societal power enriches their environmental wealth even further than their lavish surroundings, in turn appraising even more stakes and cautionary chaos to the spectrum than the first film could ever dream about. Likewise, the addition of Faith, while crucially compromising to Grace’s isolation factor, does coherently illustrate depth into the minimized backstory of our heroine protagonist before she became the brutalized bride that we came to know her as, with several interactions between the sisters conveying their dividing discourse leading to the eventual separation of their grave distancing, and though the dialogue between them leaves plenty more to be desired in terms of subtlety or even maturity, the script does seem driven to flesh these characters out more thoroughly than its predecessor, in turn allowing audiences a tighter grasp of the material that feels like an all-encompassing follow-up to that 2019 movie in more ways than one. You can attribute this to many cunning benefactors, but it’s ultimately Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett who are most integral to this movie’s prominence, particularly their distinct brand of intensely enthralling direction in capturing sequences of physicality, that effortlessly breed the kind of riveting tension that movies like these need to connect intently with their audience. While the carnage candy certainly flourishes in spades compared to its predecessor, with increased buckets of blood and garishly gruesome kills, it’s actually their psychology behind the lens that takes center stage, enacting a consistency of motions of the lens that not only bends and contorts within the many motions of the depicted characters involved, but also renders an unpredictability factor in the dangerousness of its atmospheres that continuously elevates vulnerability to the design of the characters, proving how much these two have learned about detectability and immersion in such a short time between this and two of the Scream movies, with this sequel being some of their best direction to date. In addition, Matt and Tyler also showcase a lot of meaningful performances from their driven sensibilities of these many feverishly eclectic characters, allowing Samara Weaving plenty of assistance in carrying the momentum of the movie, despite a surprising amount of deviating focus away from her character. Don’t get me wrong, Weaving is still the star of this showcase, especially in the admirable dedication to remarkable physicality that is so frequently ratcheted by the internalized agony of her emotionally gut-wrenching responses, but everybody from Kathryn Newton’s meticulously measured deliveries that intentionally never exceed those of Weavings, to Elijah Wood’s mysteriously evocative concierge, to even the rest of the ensemble’s comedic dashes of scene-stealing charisma, gives this movie the personality that brings these characters to life in the most maniacally unstable variety, feeling like the satirical manifestation of everything that you’ve been told about the upper class elitists, with unflinchingly audacious responses that further obscure the fleeting humanity from within them. Because everybody is up to task in readying Matt and Tyler’s vision of this darkly ominous underworld, it does help it to overcome some of its inconsistencies within the writing, allowing for some of the fun amid the ferocity, even if it feels like we’ve seen this done before and better.

NEGATIVES

That feels like a great place to transition to some of the movie’s weaker aspects, particularly the script helmed once again by Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy, which feels too sloppily sequenced and tonally tumultuous to feel executed with the same lightning in a bottle that was its predecessor, leading to ample variety of distractions playing out on-screen that unfortunately hindered my investment to the storytelling. For starters, this long-term conflict between Grace and Faith takes up way too much time and space inside of this outlining conflict, with three scene-halting exposition dumps between them not only conveying the most annoyingly immature kind of interaction between sisters, but also so long-winded in its diagraming that it completely wipes any semblance of urgency or tension from the proceedings, as a result of them being able to so consistently evade their predators to enact a heart to heart between them, and for my money, these continuous outbursts never exactly uncover anything freshly compelling about their dual perspectives, and it makes me wish that the script kept it to a single solitary confrontation, in order to maintain the suspense factor that was so vital to that first movie. Speaking of the first movie, you’re continuously reminded of it throughout this derivatively uninspiring outline that feels like reheated leftovers of an initially fresh taste, not only with the entirety of the outline basically recreating the very same game from that first movie, but also in the dialogue attempting to shoe-horn in as many answers as possible for audience interpretation, without anything even closely resembling subtlety or naturality to feel like legitimate conversations spawned from these kinds of characters. The worst of these is easily Wood’s aforementioned concierge, who despite Wood’s brilliance donning the character, is essentially just one big exposition dump machine to digest information for audiences who might be losing interest in a story retreading such familiar territory, instead of an evolving figure within the proceedings. It’s also a film chock full of the kinds of conveniences and contrivances that completely smother believability in how so many of these moments would legitimately play out, such as characters quite literally bringing knives to a gun fight, other characters who brought guns being Storm Trooper bad at aiming those riffles, boneheaded protagonists who have the opportunity to kill somebody, but then run off for no good reason, and of course a couple of twists during the movie’s convoluted climax, which feel predictably identifiable from previous moments that stand out like a sore thumb within the imagery of the movie, in turn wasting away any opportunity to imprint originality to this inferior installment that never effectively evades a bigger and more imposing shadow. As for the aforementioned tone, this is definitely a personal grievance, but I found the material this time around far more comedically dependent than its predecessor, with some of these scenes of physicality feeling cartoonishly silly during the movie’s attempt to breed a cool factor to some of its most creative and stylistic sequences. If the comedy itself landed even half of the time, then I could be more forgiving of its desire to deviate itself so obviously from its predecessor, but it’s the kind of commentary towards the rich that makes them feel like the kind of one-dimensional cartoons that don’t for a single solitary second feel like a threat to Grace and Faith, and as a result have this occasionally feeling like a parody on its own material. Finally, the film finds itself fighting an uphill battle as quickly as its opening act, where the pacing, in comparison to its predecessor, has this sequel taking far too long to set the actions in motion towards manifesting its plot, in turn leading to a nearly two hour runtime that is fifteen minutes longer than that previous film. Fifteen minutes might not sound like a major difference, but when the movie’s intro regurgitates everything from that previous movie, in order to freshly remind audiences who may have forgotten in the many years that have since passed, as well as incorporating sequences that could easily be cut from the finished product without losing anything in the storytelling, then you’ll find the difference to be something unavoidably tedious to what’s transpiring, leaving a little over an hour for the actual plot, the likes of which the entirety of the rest of the movie can’t even commit itself towards.

OVERALL
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come proves that bigger isn’t always better, with regards to derivative sequels that play it as close to comfortably conforming as artistically possible, with its comedically-dependent script so void of the kinds of contained tension and suspense that energized the previous film. While the fun factor still persists in a campily quirky ensemble led by commanding turns from Samara Weaving and Kathryn Newton, as well as carnage candy by the slice, it’s still a needlessly complicated story that leans heavily into convenience and contrivance to pad its runtime, delivering a repetitiously generic step down that might not exactly feel unnecessary, but does feel a few years late of striking while the iron was hot

My Grade: 6.6 or C+