A Review for “Ready or Not 2: Here I Come”

What should have been slop ended up being a surprisingly thought out and heartfelt movie set against a ton of gore and a strangely familiar cast of colorful villains. Ready or Not 2: Here I Come is not just a movie with a clunky title, it’s a pleasantly violent movie with a good blend of humor and horror and heart.

Familiarity and Contempt

A while ago, I wrote about a movie I really disliked, The Inheritance, and the entire time I was watching this movie, all I could think was, “Wow, this movie rips off The Inheritance, but I really don’t mind”. It was confusing at times, because I was both thematically and visually reminded of a whole slew of movies. 

It never felt like a direct ripoff (except for doing The Inheritance better than The Inheritance), but I was often straining to remember if John Wick was about to stroll around the corner or if Ke Huy Quan from the movie Love Hurts was going to save the day. At one point, I was certain that they recycled a villain from Bullet Train. So RoN2:HiC (a clunky acronym for a clunky title) is really all of those movies, but also its own thing.

I also really enjoyed the time they took to set up the logic in the opening scene. They acknowledged the legal complications from the end of the first movie, established the sister in a believable way, and introduced the underlying supernatural element that drives the movie. It also bridged an unnecessary gap by having Samara Weaving don her wedding dress again for this film.

Advocating for Horror and Comedy

I’ve unintentionally paired RoN2:HiC with Y2K as back to back horror comedies, loosely grouped with The Monkey, and I think from a holistic sense, RoN2:HiC was the best, most well put-together film. In my review for The Monkey, I purported that horror comedies are few and far in between, so it’s funny to realize that I accidentally plowed through three of them right after. 

The movie was fast paced, efficient, clear, funny, gory, and just the right amount of mysterious and goofy. There wasn’t a wasted moment or beat, and every scene just kept pushing the movie forward with a real clarity. Admittedly, The Monkey was equally well-paced, but I felt like that film lost its footing thematically, and the breakneck plot flew by far too fast at the end. Y2K ranks because of Rachel Zegler, who I am only interested in from a filmmaking perspective.

I’d also like to acknowledge the effort the movie went into to establish the sister, their relationship, and gave us a really satisfying conclusion. Their sisterhood was, happily, not a catty little argument, but a genuine journey that felt like a great emotional vector for our protagonist. I was impressed at how well this movie segued from Samara Weaving’s character pivoting from a spurned and betrayed bride to a whole new dimension of vengeful. It’s not often that movies that were intended to be standalone stories can adapt to a second story so easily and gracefully. I think that just the way the movie justifies itself through its runtime was worth praise. People try it all the time, and it is not easy at all to do.

I only remember bits from the first Ready or Not, but I do recall how refreshing it was, and how I was impressed by Samara Weaving. She did it again in Mayhem, which was, funny enough, yet another horror comedy with commentary about the rich. The girl is just a sucker for simulated punishment, isn’t she?

I do plan on watching the Zazie Beetz flick They Will Kill You next, just to complete a quadrafecta of films of this genre, and I fully expect to be just as thematically disoriented in that movie.

I thought that Ready or Not 2: Here I Come was great, but there are some bits and pieces sprinkled throughout that I think are going to really ruffle peoples’ feathers from a ‘wait wtf was that?’ way. I also think that their ‘rich ppl evil’ thing had a lot of unfulfilled potential. From the way they’re killed to the selected ethnicities, I just think that there was a better point to have been made than just ‘let’s kill the rich’. It could have been ‘these people are rich due to blatant evil and it’ll be fun to watch these specific people die’. 

All in all, I rate RoN2:HiC

YMMV

I watched Ready or Not 2: Here I Come on Hulu.

Wondering how my rating system works? Let me explain!