Finally caught up on Ready Or Not… and by “finally” I mean it came out all of last week *gasp*. I’ve been having sleep problems and the local theater keeps playing it on a screen with a dim bulb so I decided to *gasp* go to a different theater for a showing at a time when I was awake. And it was an $11 ticket for a 11am showing… but it was a private showing so that’s cool right?? Sigh.
Anyhow, Ready or Not is a horror comedy about a girl who marries into a super wealthy family who made their money on board and card games. As part of inducting new blood into the family, they must play a game at midnight. Usually the game is checkers, chess, or Old Maid… but there’s one bad card to draw… Hide and Seek. Which she, of course, draws. Which our wedding-dress wearing bride must survive the night in a mansion full of assassins as though it were some kind of “most dangerous game”.
This is a variation on an old story you’ve probably seen before: hunting a human for sport. But this movie turns that on its head by making the hunted (the bride) be very human (scared, desperate, confused) but also determined as hell to survive these rich crazy folk. But the hunters – the family members – were not prepared to hunt someone to death and don’t really have their heart in it. They are unprepared, scared, and confused… but they have to do it since they fear the repercussions if she survives.
And this is what the humor comes from. It’s a combination of gleefully sadistic violence-as-comedy and turning the tropes on their heads. The family members are genuinely funny in their unwilling cluelessness of how to hunt someone with 19th century weapons. But also that the bride is so intent on living and is so over all this bullshit.
The bride is probably the best part of the movie, in fact. She’s a newish actor on the scene named Samara Weaving. I’d seen her recently in the McG directed Netflix original The Babysitter where her manic smile was interesting. That smile… and the look in her eyes… are on loan from her uncle Hugo Weaving. Once you know she’s his niece, you can totally see his manic charisma in her face. She also looks a lot like Margot Robbie (but they are not related). Regardless of relations, this is a star making performance. She’s so much fun in the film going from playful to scared to determined to manic.
There’s a fun twist in the movie that flows into an ending that could have gone two fantastic ways. And it manages to have its cake and eat it too in a wonderful gleefully manic blaze of glory kind of way. This is a movie that really nails the landing with both “ending” equally honoring the horror comedy feel of the flick.
And, for the record, this movie really earns an R rating. Don’t think me calling it a horror COMEDY means that it’s not a solid suspense/horror film. Some of that comedy and horror involves extreme amounts of splatter and gore effects. Fair warning.
So, yeah, this was a lot of fun. Certainly not the best movie of the summer or the year but one of the better scary (and comedy) flicks! A really solid star-making performance from Samara Weaving and also a great female ass-kicking hero (the self-aware shot of bride in bloody gown, with boots, a bandolier, and a shotgun knows what it’s doing). This is well worth checking out.
Score: 83