Spoiler note: This review discusses how Grace survives the first Ready or Not and the setup of the sequel. It does not reveal who survives the second film or how it ends.
Grace should be getting medical help. Instead, she wakes up in a hospital with the police suspicious of her and her younger sister asking questions she really does not want to answer. That is where Ready or Not 2: Here I Come gets its first good laughs. Grace has been through something awful. Explaining it to someone who was not there makes her sound completely out of her mind.
Samara Weaving returns as Grace, the bride whose wedding night became a fight to stay alive. Kathryn Newton plays Faith, the sister she has not kept close. They barely get a chance to speak before another group of rich people decides to hunt them. Weaving and Newton are fun to watch together, especially when Grace tries to take charge and Faith refuses to be ordered around.
The sequel gives them plenty to run from. It also gives the audience more rules to remember than this story really needs. Our recommendation comes with that warning: this is a funny, extremely bloody follow-up, but it is not as easy to follow as a woman trying to escape her new husband's house.
Grace has survived one hunt. Faith has never been in one.
In the 2019 film, Grace marries into the wealthy Le Domas family. A wedding-night tradition requires her to play a game. When she draws hide-and-seek, the relatives take up weapons and try to kill her before dawn. Their fortune depends on a supernatural bargain, and they believe losing the game will have terrible consequences. Grace has to work out what is happening while trying to get away.
The second film begins immediately after her escape. There is no comfortable break in which she gets to recover or decide what to do with her life. Watching the first film before this one is worthwhile. The sequel explains the basic situation, but it cannot recreate the shock of discovering what the Le Domas family wanted from Grace. It also gives away that film's outcome within minutes.
Faith comes to the hospital because she is still listed as Grace's emergency contact. That is a good reason to bring them together. They do not meet because they have settled their problems or suddenly decided to forgive each other. They meet because someone has called the name on a form, and now neither sister can avoid the conversation.
Newton makes Faith's disbelief funny without requiring her to know everything the audience knows. Grace is talking about a murderous family and an unbelievable night. Faith is looking at her sister in a hospital bed. Faith's questions help newcomers understand Grace's situation, while giving returning viewers someone who reacts to it with fresh disbelief.
Once the sisters are dragged into another hunt, their different levels of experience matter. Grace knows these people really will kill them. Faith is still catching up. Weaving plays Grace as tired and angry, not as someone delighted to have become an action hero. That makes her impatience with her sister understandable, even when she is being unfair.
Having two people escape together also creates problems that Grace did not have on her own. The sisters spend part of the film handcuffed to each other. They cannot simply choose different routes or move at their own speed. They have to cooperate before they are ready to trust each other. That physical problem tells us more about their relationship than another explanation of why they stopped speaking would.
The arguments do sometimes go on too long. Their past deserves attention, but stopping to discuss it while armed strangers are searching for them can be frustrating. There are moments when the film wants us to worry about an approaching attack and concentrate on an old family grievance at the same time. The jokes work best when the sisters are trying to do something together, not when the escape has to wait for a serious conversation.
Even so, adding Faith is a better choice than giving Grace another group of strangers to protect. Newton can annoy her, challenge her and still make us want them both to get out. Their relationship provides a reason to care about this second escape beyond seeing how much worse Grace's day can become.
The hunters have a lawyer, a rulebook and their own family problems
The Le Domas family was not acting alone. The sequel introduces other wealthy families whose power comes from the same supernatural arrangement. Four rival families now pursue Grace. The reward is leadership of the Council, the group behind this arrangement. For the hunters, killing her is a way to gain more power. For Grace, the immediate problem is much simpler: get herself and Faith out alive.
Elijah Wood plays the Lawyer who explains and enforces the contest. He does not join the hunt. He makes sure the participants follow its rules. Wood is funny because he treats this terrible situation as ordinary work. He can stand in front of people preparing to commit murder and concentrate on whether they are doing it correctly.
The rules affect who can compete and what they can use. A family's weapons are linked to when it joined the arrangement. Relatives waiting on the sidelines can become replacements. Members of rival families cannot simply kill each other to remove the competition. These restrictions create opportunities for arguments and mistakes, which are often more entertaining than another straightforward attack on Grace.
There is a limit, though. The explanations interrupt the chase too often. The first film's central question was easy to hold onto: could Grace stay alive until morning? Here, the film keeps asking us to consider another condition or exception. Wood makes the information amusing, but a good delivery cannot make every extra rule necessary.
Sarah Michelle Gellar and Shawn Hatosy play Ursula and Titus Danforth, another pair of siblings with an unhappy relationship. They are trying to protect their family's position while competing for power. Gellar gives Ursula a controlled manner that makes her a useful contrast to the more aggressive Titus. Ursula and Titus are worth watching even when Grace is elsewhere. Their disagreements make the hunters feel like people who could ruin each other's plans, rather than a single group patiently taking turns to attack.
The comparison with Grace and Faith is easy to understand. Both pairs have family history that affects how they behave. But Grace and Faith need to keep each other alive. Ursula and Titus are also concerned with who gets to be in charge. That difference is enough to make their scenes distinct without a speech explaining what each family represents.
David Cronenberg appears as their father, Chester. His name is a treat for horror fans, but do not go in expecting a large role. The film already has a crowded cast. Its best supporting performances belong to characters who get a specific job in the story, such as Wood's rule-enforcer, rather than simply being another wealthy person with a weapon.
The fights are funny and nasty, but the chase can feel familiar
Grace and Faith run through a country club and its surrounding grounds, with a golf course and casino among the new locations. Moving outside gives the filmmakers more room for pursuits and physical comedy. It also means this is less often a film about listening for someone on the other side of a door. Expect more running and fighting than quiet hiding.
That change will suit viewers who liked the first film's most outrageous moments. A sequence involving pepper spray and Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart is a good example of the sequel's approach: a fight can become ridiculous without stopping being painful. Another encounter makes an industrial washing machine deeply unpleasant to look at. The violence is not confined to quick, tidy deaths.
The sisters' reactions are important here. Someone can look shocked or disgusted after a sudden burst of violence, giving the audience a moment to laugh before the next danger arrives. Newton is especially useful as the person who has not already spent a whole movie dealing with this. Weaving, meanwhile, can make Grace's anger funny without making her injuries seem irrelevant.
The blood and injuries are too graphic for viewers who only want light comedy. This is an R-rated horror film, not a gentle comedy with a few spooky scenes. Its exaggerated violence can be funny, but the attacks on the sisters are also harsh. If you found the first film unpleasant rather than amusing, the extra action here is unlikely to change your mind.
The larger setting has a drawback as well. More places to run do not always mean more interesting things happen during the escape. Around the middle, another pursuit can feel like a delay before the next good joke. Grace is in danger, she fights back, and the film sends her toward another attacker. The new cast is more surprising than the repeated hunt.
Still, we would recommend it to fans who want another evening with Grace. Weaving makes us want to see her escape again. Newton gives her someone lively to argue with, and the competing villains are fun to watch. The film works better as a bloody comedy about these people than as a reason to learn every detail of the Council.
Pixel Twelve score: 7.3/10 — Good. The performances and physical comedy earn the recommendation. The repeated escapes and frequent rule explanations keep it below the original for us. Start with Ready or Not if you have not seen it. If you already liked Grace and can handle graphic gore, this sequel gives you plenty to laugh at, even when you wish everyone would stop explaining the contest and get moving.
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come runs 108 minutes and is available on Hulu in the United States. Availability outside the US varies.
More scenes from Ready or Not 2
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