Ready or Not
Starring: Samara Weaving, Adam Brody, Mark O'Brien, Henry Czerny, Andie MacDowell
Director: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett
Ready or Not is the “people hunting people” film that was able to avoid the president’s detection, most likely because he didn’t realize there was anything amiss with what its characters were doing. Here is a film that is simple, fun, and gives you a little something to go home with—namely that we ought to start thinking about what time, where, and how we are going to eat the rich. Of course, you can also love your guns and God as well and have a great time here. The movie is not inherently political or inflammatory. It is, however, very fun, and you can’t help but feel some kind of way when the credits roll, by which time you have seen things go up in flames.
I have it easy writing the synopsis for this one. Grace (Samara Weaving), who came from nothing, is marrying into a bizarre wealthy family. The movie does an oddly convincing job of selling us on what Grace wants out of this financially beneficial marriage—the money is one thing, but what she really craves is the one thing she’s never had as an orphan raised by various foster parents—a permanent family. The vows and ceremony happen, and then her husband, Alex (Mark O’Brien), informs her that the really important part comes at midnight. At midnight, a mystery box, gifted to their ancestor by a mysterious man who totally wasn’t the devil, procures a card with a game written on it. This ritual occurs every time someone is added to the family, and in the words of comedian Lizzy Cooperman, who does a Truth Or Dare bit in her standup, “Everybody has to do it! Everybody has to play!” For some, it’s chess, for others, it’s Old Maid. All of the games hail from the era the long deceased Le Domas patriarch met Not Satan, so no one’s playing Twister on their wedding night, which could make for a very different movie.
Why this game must be played, and whether or not Not Satan is as real as a glazed donut or as made up as, well, real Satan, I won’t reveal. You think the movie’s going one way, then it goes another, but subversion of expectations isn’t as much what it’s interested in as much as it is good old survival thriller fun.
Survival, you say? I forgot to mention—there’s one card you never want to draw: Hide n’ Seek. The other games are just games. Hide n’ Seek, though, pits the newlywed in-law against the entire family. The newlywed must hide for their life while the rest of the family hunts them with arcane weapons. The purpose of this becomes clearer as the movie goes on, but early on it’s clear that the Le Domas family members have no qualms about killing.
Grace, of course, draws said card. This isn’t a spoiler; she’s not armed to the teeth on the film’s poster over a game of Parcheesi. Alex and his alcoholic brother, Daniel (Adam Brody) are of course conflicted over the matter. Nobody else really is, with the possible exception of Becky (Andie MacDowell, who is always GOAT—no pun intended in this case), who herself knows the perils of being the outsider in this strange, messed up family.
Things go wrong immediately, and this is part of what makes the movie so much fun. Similar to how Green Room featured bad decision making that you’d see in real life (as opposed to the just outright stupid decisions you’d make in horror films) Ready Or Not treats us to a violent comedy of errors. The movie keeps its fun by going over the top—in so many ways it’s very similar to the James Gunn-written project The Belko Experiment, but this one didn’t bum me the way that one did. Part of this is that you feel pretty quickly that almost everyone gets what’s coming to them.
Each member of the ensemble shines, with Brody and MacDowell landing the biggest impacts, and the movie never drags. My main issues with the film stem with its ending, only because there were so many places they could have gone with their premise and the filmmakers kind of try to have their cake and eat it too. What we end up with has less of a thematic impact than I would have liked, but I think it will be satisfying for most movie goers.
Man is the most dangerous game, but Hide n’ Seek is pretty damn close.
B+