Ready Or Not is a 2019 horror film starring Samara Weaving who gets married into a rich family and as part of an initiation has to play a game and she selects hide and seek and if the family find her, she has to be sacrificed and there is a limited amount of time. That’s the plot and it's straight forward and doesn’t have to over complicate things. This film is directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillet who previously directed Devil’s Due (which as of writing, I haven’t seen).
I really liked this film. I thought that it was a good idea and the whole thing moves along at a solid pace and it never feels like its padding or over staying its welcome. It's 1 hour and 35 minutes and I was surprised at how quickly the time had passed. The film doesn’t stretch things too far. They don’t keep Grace in the house and find more and more stupid ways of keeping here there and she does manage to get out and they don’t play the ‘picked up by someone pretending to be a help but turning out to be a member of the family’ trick which I appreciated. They managed to do things without me rolling my eyes which hasn’t happened in a horror for……well ages. The humour is really funny such as the killing of the maids and the reaction when Helene blows up. It’s the perfect reaction.
The performances are quite good. I thought that Samara Weaving was very good as Grace. Weaving follows that tradition of people who have starred in Australian soaps and gone on to do quite well afterwards. I thought that she led the film solidly and made me winch when she gets shot in the hand and has to impale herself to get herself out of the hole. I thought that Henry Czerny was very funny as Tony the father. Melanie Scrofano is also quite funny as the cocaine addicted Emilie who is a terrible shot except when she manages to fire a crossbow perfectly into one of the maids mouth. Andie MacDowell turns in this film and it’s the first film I think I’ve seen her in since Groundhog Day back in 1993. I think she’s there because of name recognition because she never really gets involved except to have a heart to heart with Alex towards the end although she does have a really good death.
It’s not a completely perfect film. Firstly there is Samara Weaving’s cry/scream which sounds like she’s auditioning to play Xena. It was totally distracting and I could have done without it. Also there is flip-flopping of Alex who doesn’t want anything to happen to Grace and then willingly goes along with the sacrifice. I thought that it made him look slightly weak. I couldn’t really make my mind up what I was supposed to think about him so when he died I was like…ok.
As I said, I really like this film. I thought it had a nice balance of horror and humour and ended in the only way that it could do.
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