FAINT WAVES

This might veer slightly outside what you might expect from this website (or at least what you’ve seen me write about up to this point), but I’ve written quite a bit about things that have struck a chord with me and what I’ve been tuned in to, entertainment-wise. This writing is no exception. I recently watched Ready Or Not and Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come. With Ready Or Not 2 currently in theaters (as of this writing) and not quite doing as well as I’d like it to, I thought I’d do my (very small) part and share my thoughts. Having seen the first film just last week for the first time too, I figured I’d review/write about them together, as they really are presented as one cohesive story anyway. For your benefit as well, whoever may see this now or in the future, I’ll keep things broad and as spoiler-free as possible.

Ready Or Not features Samara Weaving (who I had only seen on Ash VS Evil Dead a bunch of years ago) in the lead role. In simplest terms, it follows a young bride who is hunted by her spouse’s wealthy family as part of a wedding night ritual to worship the Devil, because they are satanists (naturally). There’s a bit more lore and complexity involved than that; the way she gets there is by drawing a card and each card features a different game, she gets hide and seek (which is evidently a very bad and rare card to draw). What results is a high-stakes game of cat and mouse that lends itself as well to comedy as it does suspense and gore. There are stakes not only for the protagonist (Grace, played by Samara Weaving) but for the antagonists (Henry Czerny, Adam Brody, Andie MacDowell, etc.) as well, because if she survives, something very bad is going to befall all of them (you know, the whole deal with the devil thing comes at a price). I missed the film back in 2019. I wish I had seen it in theaters back then, because it’s a strong, relatively small-scale story that wasn’t made for truckloads of money (something I’m keen to support these days). It was made on a budget of $6 million and ended up making over $57 million, which is pretty great and well deserved. With news of the sequel coming out, I thought I’d finally give it a spin. That way, if I liked it, I could go support the sequel and see a movie in the theater (as I like to do but don’t get to as much as I like). I’m glad I did, it was a pretty good little movie. I’d recommend it to just about anyone, there’s great gore, great costuming, and rock-solid performances all around. Samara Weaving in particular delivers a great performance, her screams (of fear and anger) are some of the most striking and memorable I’ve heard in recent memory too; absolutely deserving of the scream queen title.

That brings us to the sequel, which I gladly saw in the theater. The aptly titled Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come is set immediately after the events of Ready Or Not, literally, the beginning of the film flows immediately from the ending of the first film. It was cool to see for a viewer like myself who had just seen the ending for the first time a couple days prior, it made it all feel like one story, even though there’s nearly seven years between the films coming out. Ready Or Not 2 follows Grace as she is once again hunted, this time by several elite families in a high-stakes ritual to claim a seat of “ultimate power”. This time as well, her estranged sister (Faith, played by Kathryn Newton) has been dragged along, used as leverage to make Grace participate in this deadly game of hide and seek yet again. The film expands on the satanic lore of the first film and reveals a larger world, with families vying for a seat of power within a hierarchic council, that the family from the first film belonged to I might add. While it may sound slightly contrived, the expanded lore helps everything make sense and like I said, the flow of the narrative makes the first film and this one feel like one big story. Where the film shines most, is having Grace and Faith being hunted together, the two characters are forced to work together and reconcile their differences in order to survive. Along the way, you get a glimpse into their history and Grace’s backstory, which you only get a touch of in the first film. Samara Weaving and Kathryn Newton are a beautiful pairing, both having the acting ability to provide the film its emotional core, as the sisterly bond their characters have in the film is one of the strongest things about it. I’d say this sequel is as good, if not better in a lot of respects than the first film, but I’d also recommend them as a double feature. Ready Or Not may be a contained story that you can just watch, but Ready Or Not 2 continues the story in such a seamless fashion, I have to advocate for them being seen as close together as possible.

In closing, I wanted to write about these films because I very much enjoyed them. I also wanted to write about them because Ready Or Not 2 is not raking it in like it should be. It yet again has a small-ish budget at 14 million, so it doesn’t have to make a fortune, but it at least deserves to double its money. I understand taking almost seven years for a sequel to come out is going to do it no favors, but my hope is that it will at least land between 30 and 40 million by the end of its run, hopefully more. If you saw the first film back in 2019, I’d urge you to go see this sequel, you will not be sorry. If you’ve never seen the first one, even better. Ready Or Not is streaming, go watch it, then go see Ready Or Not 2 in the theater. Make a night or weekend of it, enjoy a couple great modern pictures. Seriously. At this stage, I worry about the theater and I worry about film, and I want more movies like this. Movies without astronomical budgets that are entertaining, emotive, and visceral. Movies that tell a story and that’s it. While this may be a sequel (I’m okay with sequels for the most part), it simply continues the story of the first film, and it doesn’t even go as far as setting up a trilogy (at all). It’s not begging to be franchised, it’s not part of some vast “cinematic universe”, these are just a couple good movies. That’s what I want. Give me more of this, that’s how I feel, which is exactly why I’m going to go see the similarly premised They Will Kill You next week. If you like these movies, maybe go see that one. Or, if you’re a fan of Samara Weaving like I am now, she’s got a film with Jason Segel coming out next month. Either way, go see some movies.

Thanks for reading.

Watch Ready Or Not, see Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come, in theaters now.