Elijah Wood

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come

25/03/26

Cineworld, Edinburgh

2019’s Ready or Not was one of those plucky little films that made a big impression. It introduced Samara Weaving as Grace, a young woman who unwittingly marries a Satanist (it happens) and then spends the rest of the film playing a bizarre game of Hide and Seek with her new husband and his family, all of whom are doing their level best to murder her with an array of vintage weapons. It was a deceptively simple concept, played through with great flair and absolute precision – and it worked like a charm.

Rumours of a sequel started soon after its release and now here it finally is, bigger, louder and (inevitably) bloodier than its predecessor. It picks up right where the last film finished off with a wounded and dishevelled Grace stumbling from a blazing building and being rushed to hospital. She’s had a close call but it’s all over now. Except, of course, it isn’t (that incredibly redundant 2 in the title is the clue).

She is soon informed that, because she’s managed to despatch an entire family in the Satanist hierarchy, she must now play the same game all over again, this time pitted against the heads of several different households. Whoever manages to kill Grace will be the new Satanic leader, taking over from Chester Danforth, played by esteemed horror director David Cronenberg. He’s glimpsed only briefly before he’s erased – as the rules dictate – by his two children, Titus (Shawn Hatosy) and Ursula (Sarah Michelle Gellar). And naturally, Chester’s twin kids both feel that they should be the one to inherit the kingdom.

To further complicate matters, Grace is now accompanied by her estranged younger sister, Faith (Kathyryn Newton), who has turned up at the hospital because she’s still listed as Grace’s next of kin. Now the two of them, handcuffed together, must take on seemingly insurmountable odds…

The old rule of sequels is as reductive as ever. Directors Guy Busick and R Christopher Murphy give it their best shot, working from a screenplay by Radio Silence (Marc Bettenelli-Olpin and Tyler Gilett), but they’re in a game of diminishing returns, no matter how much gusto they employ. Most of the running time features that kind of Sam Raimi-esque slapstick horror, where the impulse is to laugh out loud as people quite literally explode. The problem with that is that the reasons for Satanists exploding are quite convoluted and I’m still unclear about a couple of examples – but maybe that’s just me.

Both Weaving and Newton are strong in their roles and their habitual bickering as they flail from one disaster to the next is often more entertaining than the carnage. Elijah Wood gives the film one of its strongest cards as ‘The Lawyer,’ managing to stay straight-faced and erudite as the bodies pile up around him. The film itself runs out of steam long before its ridiculously protracted conclusion and the old adage about ‘less is more’ has rarely felt more apt.

This isn’t terrible, but neither is it a patch on it’s leaner, meaner progenitor. There’s already talk about a third instalment, but I sincerely hope that everyone has the good sense to leave it here. There are only so many exploding Satanists a fellow can take.

3 stars

Philip Caveney

The Monkey

23/02/25

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Director Osgood Perkins scored a palpable hit last year with Longlegs, a slow-burn horror that simmered with an overpowering sense of dread. So the news that he is helming an adaptation of Stephen King’s The Monkey (itself inspired by WW Jacobs’ classic short story, The Monkey’s Paw) leads me to expect that this will deliver more of the same. So I’m taken somewhat off-balance when the film promptly reveals itself as an absurd black comedy with lashings of gore. The result is never particularly scary, but it does prompt a surprising amount of incredulous laughter.

It begins in flashback, as the father of twin boys, Hal and Bill (both played by Christian Convery), attempts to gift an unwanted ‘toy’ to a thrift store, with unexpectedly gruesome results. The toy in question is the titular simian, a wind-up automaton that plays a drum to the tune of ‘I Do Like To Be Beside the Seaside.’ Once activated (by turning the key in its back), it has a nasty habit of ensuring that somebody in the immediate vicinity will get horrifically mangled, for no apparent reason other than it’s a nasty little pest who enjoys doing that kind of thing.

After their father ‘goes out for cigarettes and never returns,’ Hal and Bill grow up under the care of their understandably disturbed mum, Lois (Tatiana Maslany). One night, when searching through their absent father’s belongings, the boys discover the monkey in its box. Probably not a good idea to wind the key, you might think, but hey, kids will be kids…

By adulthood, the two brothers (now played by Theo James) have drifted apart. Hal is the father of a teenage boy, but after his marriage break-up, only gets to spend one night a year with Petey (Colin O’Brian) and – wouldn’t you know it – that one night is when the malevolent monkey chooses to make its timely reappearance…

There’s much I like about this film: Nico Aguilar’s dark, brooding cinematography is suitably eye-catching and the gnarly splatter effects – created by no less than sixteen people in the arts department – take a wonderfully Heath Robinson approach to the task of dissembling human bodies. Much of the resulting mayhem is entertaining. The monkey itself is an engaging creation, positively oozing menace in every shot. But not everything in the production is quite so positive.

While a host of interesting characters manage to pop up to deliver Perkins’ sparky dialogue, no sooner have they appeared than they’re being messily spread across the screen and the effect is that this feels like a film that’s almost entirely peopled by bit players (or players in bits?). Perkins himself cameos as ‘Uncle Chip’ but gifts with only one line of dialogue before he gets turned to mush, while Elijah Wood doesn’t fare much better as Petey’s stepfather, Ted, though – to be fair – he’s one of the few characters who actually survives. Furthermore, a sub-plot featuring a man called Thrasher (Rohan Campbell) is so clumsily inserted into the action that for a while it only serves to confuse me, particularly when the actor is also obliged to play two characters.

I’m clearly not the only one with misgivings. Half an hour into the screening, three viewers get up and march determinedly out of the auditorium. Those with a predilection for comedy in a deep shade of anthracite may (like me) laugh out loud at what they’re watching and will possibly revel in the WTF final scenes.

But The Monkey is a tricky little beast and one thing is for sure: it won’t be for everyone.

3.7 stars

Philip Caveney