Ready or Not (2019) is a watch. It’s a delightful slasher-comedy-horror about a bride who, at her reception, learns that she’s married into a wealthy (and by that I mean the wealthiest) satanic cult. Main character Grace’s (Samara Weaving) new family revels in having to hunt and kill her before dawn or bad things will happen. It’s a comedic mix of The Belko Experiment (2016) and Get Out (2017) and, my guess, what heavily inspired action-comedy-horror The Hunt (2022), also a watch. Ready or Not’s funny-cuz-it’s-true vibe had us nodding and chuckling because what else can commoners do in the face of such inhuman sincerity. Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (2026) hits the ground fainting, picking up right where the first left off. A bedraggled Grace stumbles down the front steps of the Le Domas family manor trying to light a smoke as police and paramedics attend to her near-death state. The poor girl heroically and comically fought and won against the first set of power elites, but faster than one can say Poochie, her emergency contact/estranged younger sister Faith (Kathryn Newton) shows up and the series immediately loses much of its hard won momentum. Now instead of a fierce and fearful Grace fighting the impossible fight against the rich and powerful with her might and luck, we are subjected to endless and unfunny bicker-heavy exchanges as the sisters begrudgingly work together to battle a new stock of baddies within the establishment. What starts as a clever contrivance – being hunted within the confines of a country club – gets dragged down by filler/unrealistic/boring dialogue that tries and fails to broaden the narrative’s emotional dynamics with some semblance of heart and familial connection. To start, their overarching argument is meant to be tragic, but it’s just uninteresting and Newton looks proud and not all that bothered as she runs and fights for her life. Yes this is a comedy-horror, but the good ones are ballasted by realism and terror. Just look at Weaving throughout, who is participating in a very different reality than her co-star. Weaving is, as usual, a committed and amusing presence, same goes for Varun Saranga and Elijah Wood, and the Illuminati-vacant-chair storyline concocted to keep Grace playing this doomed version of hide and seek worked well for me, until the end that is when it all devolves into a double-speak and a break-your-own rules mess; and the relentless starting and stopping of violent encounters and deaths are just okay and mostly unfunny, with injuries endured by our heros that have little to no real life consequences. Still I watched, because it looks great and it moves fast and I can never pass up a premium, albeit ho-hum comedy-horror production. It does well enough inching the series along, but unfortunately its suffers from unreadiness.

WATCH OR NOT: WATCH