★★★½☆

I love horror, but what I love more than a classic horror flick is a campy horror flick. Ready or Not is comically gruesome, satirical, and a bloody violent spectacle. Samara Weaving’s Grace emerging as the final girl after the Le Domas family explodes in front of her very eyes is one of the most satisfying endings to a horror movie yet. So while I was incredibly excited at the thought of a sequel, I was more nervous that it wouldn’t live up to its predecessor. 

How Does It Live Up To The First Movie?

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come picks up where the last film ends. We jump right into the action and find Grace in a newer and more obscene network of devil obsessed rich folk, looking to take over the world now that the Le Domas family are gone. Grace barely has time to heal let alone breathe before getting thrown into another game of hide and seek, but this time her estranged sister Faith (Kathryn Newton) is along for the ride.

It’s hard not to compare the two movies. Realising that the Le Bail curse on the Le Domas family was real and watching them all blow up was unexpectedly hilarious, and such a gratifying way to watch these horrible people go. The first film felt fresh in the horror genre, a game of hide and seek turned into a blood filled hunt for survival is a concept that hadn’t been done before. But now knowing the lore behind it all – the curse, the demonic rituals the rich seem to partake in, the lack of any moral standing – leaves few surprises for the second movie.

Though it’s not to say that it’s all bad, this movie still holds up as being comedic and awfully bloody at the same time. It allowed the writers Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy to take the story a step further, where they expanded this underground demonic wealthy cult to an entire network of high class families around the globe. This extension of the wealthy also led to big name stars Sarah Michelle Gellar, Elijah Wood, and critically acclaimed director David Cronenberg joining the cast.

Sibling Energy

In conjunction with the growing list of people out to get Grace, the stakes are even higher with Grace’s younger sister getting mixed into the chaos. Their strained relationship is the throughline of this movie, where we discover that Grace had left Faith to go to New York when she was 18 in hopes of finding a better life for the two of them. But this decision left Faith feeling abandoned. Their bond as sisters becomes the basis of what keeps them both alive, while mending their relationship. And without Faith I’m not sure that Grace would’ve made it this time around.

With that, it’s easy to believe the Weaving and Newton are sisters, their chemistry is palpable and they both play into the frenzied smug archetypes of their characters so well. The moments between them are heartfelt and something the movie heavily leans on, especially in comparison to the tumultuous relationship between twins Ursula (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Titus Danforth (Shawn Hatosy).

This snarky pair are chilling villains. A part of the Danforth family, they are the main contenders of achieving success in eliminating Grace and obtaining power. Ursula begins as the leader of the two, stronger, smarter, and in control. Whereas Titus seems to be the clueless, weak, and timid sibling. Then it’s as though a switch flips and the power dynamic between the two shifts, swapping personas as the hunt gets more heated.

Samara Weaving Is The Scream Queen

It would also be a disservice not to mention Weaving’s commitment to this role. The first movie put her on the map as having one of the greatest screams in horror ever, and she continues to deliver that same intensity in this movie. There are barely any moments where she gets to take a break and she consistently delivers these grating screams that confirms her place as the ultimate scream queen of our generation.

Is The Sequel Better Than The Original?

There’s no doubt that this movie had its great moments. It upped the anti and made the list of people out to get Grace even bigger, but it just can’t hold a candle to the original.

It’s an unspoken truth that sequels almost never live up to the first movie. Ready or Not 2: Here I Come follows closely behind Ready or Not but it unfortunately can’t beat the original. It’s definitely a crowd pleaser, but there was something missing the second time around that the first movie embodied. It could be the fact that we already know backstory, leaving little to the imagination, or that even though it doubles the stakes, it becomes a pantomime of itself. But despite that, it’s gory, funny, and entertaining the whole way through.

Header Image Credit: Searchlight Pictures