Hunted by her husbands’ wealthy family on her wedding night, Grace (Samara Weaving) decides to arm herself. She grabs a large shotgun and slings a bandoleer over her shoulder. Before she leaves, Grace stops to admire how badass she looks in a mirror – torn wedding dress, dirty trainers, shotgun and ammo belt.
It’s a poster shot and a statement of intent and tone – the quickest way to explain what Ready or Not is about is to show them this awesome image of Grace and say ‘the new in-laws are trying to kill her.’
Sounds good, right? Well, turns out the gun and ammo that Grace picked up were display-only. Just there to look cool – and that’s pretty much Ready or Not in a nutshell.
It’s not that the film isn’t thrilling or entertaining. It’s just hard to shake the feeling that it thinks it’s way more thrilling and entertaining than it actually is. There’s something smug and self-congratulatory about the way it lingers on certain moments and shots – look at how cool this looks, how fun we are.
Because of that, instead of being thoroughly entertained, I often paused and asked myself – is it though? Is it really that cool? That fun?
Sometimes it is. Sometimes the violence, the swearing and the sheer lunacy of the situation really jell together and make for some memorable and exciting bits. A lot of the time, though, it just feels like Ready or Not doesn’t quite earn those big, lavish, crowd-pleasing moments it’s shooting for.
There’s also a definite sense that the premise – rich family hunt new bride on her wedding night – came first, and all the rules and details of how and why came after.
The rules and satanic ritual backstory of the game are messy at best, straining to justify the scenario. The biggest strike against the whole thing is that there is only way for Grace to win. She has to survive until dawn, at which point the family would all die at the hands of their dark master.
Ready or Not tries to throw a wrench in this by questioning if the whole Satan thing is real or not, but it’s a half-hearted and unconvincing attempt.
You would think that this kind of overblown, dark comedy would culminate in Grace transforming from a helpless victim to a badass action survivor that confronts her hunters – but that’s not really the case.
This is where I’m going to go into SPOILER territory.
Most of the family dies in a cartoonish CGI blood explosion when dawn comes and Grace is still alive. It’s meant to be cathartic, I’m sure, watching all these terrible rich people that have tormented the main character just up and die, but it’s thoroughly unsatisfying.
One, there’s no variety, because it’s the same death over and over again – an instant, giant blood splatter. Two, it would have been far more cathartic if Grace had killed most or all of them directly, rather than indirectly. The family member she does kill earlier is one of the few characters to have been painted in a more sympathetic light.
This results in a death that’s a mess of contradicting emotions. Am I sad that this character just died? Thrilled to see Grace rising to the occasion? Horrified that she’s gone too far?
The twists are painfully telegraphed – there’s a scene where the aunt basically just tells you about the big betrayal that’s going to happen at the end.
Since Grace wants to escape/survive rather than fight back, the movie eventually writes itself into a corner and has to force her back to the mansion in the dumbest way possible. Maybe her car phone conversation with Justin was meant to be a takedown on ludicrously contrived horror movie plot points, but even then it’s just too dumb for its own good.
Stuff like this is why Ready or Not often feels at odds with itself – which is also part of the reason its big moments can end up feeling unearned.
The premise is great, but so many of the decisions made along the way seems to actively work against its strengths. It’s disappointing, because when Ready or Not does work, it works quite well.
Grace’s tearful breakdown after she sees her rich in-laws accidentally kill a servant and realises the deadly stakes of the game is an entirely believable reaction that makes you care about her. Grace punching out a little kid after he shoots her in the hand? Great stuff.
The acting in general is quite good across the board, balancing appropriately over-the-top moments with sprinkles of genuine humanity. Samara Weaving and Andie MacDowell are in top form. I was also rather fond of Henry Czerny as the family patriarch that doesn’t quite have a handle on the situation.
That being said, most of the time I found myself wondering about the movie that Ready or Not could have been, rather than the movie it is. It’s a film that spent more time telling me how much of a fun, overblown dark comedy it is than actually being a fun, overblown dark comedy.
Ready or Not releases 25th September.