Done Like Dinner
Devil worship? Check. exploding rich folks? You bet. Sequelitis? Hell’s yes.
REady or Not 2: Here I come
Directors: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett • Writers: Guy Busick, R Christopher Murphy
Starring: Samara Weaving, Kathryn Newton, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shawn Hatosy, Elijah Wood
USA • 1hr 48mins
Opens Hong Kong March 26 • III
Grade: B-
No. You’re not imagining things and this isn’t an AI duplicate. This is not the same review on a second page. This is not They Will Kill You. But you wouldn’t be blamed for any confusion caused by the doppelganger action on display here.
Like I said, in this white version of the Eat the Rich Satanic cult movie that takes place over one night in an fancy building where one of two estranged sisters may or may not wind up a blood sacrifice to the Lord of the Dark, the differene is the sisters … and it’s a sequel. Mea culpa. I forgot. Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (and this is how you do sequel titles, Now You See Me 3) picks up in the literal minutes after the first suprise hit from 2019 ended, with bride-turned-widow Grace MacCaullay-Le Domas (Samara Weaving) surviving a murderous night of Hide and Seek with her new in-laws. They either exploded or she killed them in a fight to the death as part of some weird, devil cult initiation as only the ultra-rich can concoct. She wakes up in hospital cuffed to the bed, and is greeted by her totally retconned, estranged little sister Faith (Kathryn Newton, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania).
From this point on it’s just rinse and repeat, as Scream, Scream VI and Abigail directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett clamber around to find ways to both keep Grace trapped in a fatal game loop and somehow double down on the so-called stakes. It’s not terrible, and it’s certainly neither better nor worse than its Black twin. It’s just a matter of whether you want more of the same same – writers Guy Busick and R Christopher Murphy even find a way to get Grace back in her wedding gown – or original same. Wow, that does my head in.
Blood bonds
Here I Come probably has the edge when it comes to the new sister. Newton has quickly carved out a niche for herself as a next gen horror queen and Supremely Snarky Cool Bestie (Freaky, the aforementioned Abigail, Lisa Frankenstein), as well as in the shadowy puppetmaster looming over everything (other than Satan of course, AKA Mr Le Bail) in everyone’s favourite maniac body horror trailblazing director David Cronenberg as Council patriarch Chester Danforth. The Council in this case is the star chamber of rich assholes that are running the world and running it into the ground. When he dies his entitled children, the level-headed Ursula (Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar) and her psychotic brother Titus (the entirely empathetic and competent ER doctor on The Pitt, Shawn Hatosy) have to fight the rest of the Major Families on the Council (this movie has so much narrative upper case) to earn back their place at the top. Why? Because Grace eliminated a whole clan on her wedding night and it’s in the script. The rules of the game are for shit and are really just there to conjure reasons to explode people. The Council is convened by The Lawyer and Le Bail’s representative (Elijah Wood, still Frodo), and the famiy reps – the El Caidos (Néstor Carbonell), the Wilkinsons (Kevin Durand), the Wans (Olivia Cheng), the Rajans (Nadeem Umar-Khitab), the Danforths, and a Danforth cousin (Dan Beirne) – converge on a Danforth golf resort for another game of Hide and Seek. This is flimsy at best.
Here I Come also has Varun Saranga as the Rajan family little brother, one of the relatives on hand in case the main rep dies (I don’t know, that’s what they say) so no one unfairly forfeits or something. He’s genuinely hilarious as the bro who just wants to get rich and high, and whose dynamic with his over-it wife is a high point. Durand is, as usual, great value as the Wilkinson scion who keeps a giant box of cocaine on his desk, and Durand makes the most of his coked out lunkhead. But tone is a major problem for Here I Come, especially with Hatosy’s Titus, whose psychopathic rage and violence goes over the top even for a movie like this. There’s zero funny about Titus and it clangs like mad when the film’s class and race commentary isn’t as sophisticated as it is in They Will Kill You (I can’t believe I said that).
Still, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett know what movie they’re making and what’s expected (more of what made Ready or Not a grim delight), and they put the slightly bored-looking Weaving through the right paces en route to the inevitable finale. There are some good kills and a creative use of the “Santise” setting on a washing machine, so gore hounds will pleased, and given the current mood perpetrating awfulness upon the rich remains intensely cathartic. But I swear to god one more scene where a character says something deliberately cruel to get another to go away in order to “protect” them and I’m going to start spray painting theatre screens. Also, if you’re going to scrub blood off of skin then fucking scrub. Enough of that dabbing nonsense.