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