What’s It About

Grace couldn’t be happier after she marries the man of her dreams at his family’s luxurious estate. There’s just one catch — she must now hide from midnight until dawn while her new in-laws hunt her with guns, crossbows, and other weapons.

MOVIESinMO REVIEW

The trailer tells you something. But sitting in that theater watching Ready or Not play out for ninety minutes is a completely different experience. What looks like a wild, campy horror premise on paper turns into one of the most entertaining, darkly funny films of the year — and nobody saw it coming. Searchlight Pictures released this film on a budget of roughly six million dollars. By the time word spread, it had earned nearly ten times that back. Sometimes the small ones hit hardest. The setup is simple, almost deceptively so. Grace, played with full commitment by Australian actress Samara Weaving, has just married into the Le Domas family — a dynasty that built its fortune on board games, cards, and sports entertainment. Old money. Big house. Strange energy. On the surface, they read like your typical wealthy eccentric family, the kind that has too many rooms and too many secrets. Grace accepts them as quirky. Odd, maybe. But harmless. She is wrong. The Le Domas family tradition holds that every new person who marries into the family must play a game at midnight on their wedding night. Most games are harmless: chess, Old Maid, checkers. Long ago, the family cut a deal with a mysterious man they knew as Mr. Le Bail. And now, if a family member marries into the family, they will have to play a game. Unfortunately, Grace chose hide-and-seek. The one card that carries a death sentence on the newly married spouse. Once the game begins, all family members must find the new spouse before sunrise or die. Grace happened to draw the hide-and-seek card. What started as a celebration quickly became an intense countdown to sunrise. When Alex (portrayed by Mark O’Brien) married Grace, he knew about the family’s traditions, but did not tell her about it. His betrayal is there throughout the film, affecting Grace’s flight from the family, while she is trying to handle the idea that Alex chose to protect his family instead of her. That adds a layer of genuine hurt underneath all the chaos, and Weaving carries it without letting it slow the film down. Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, working together as Radio Silence, take their time in the first act. The first thirty minutes establish the film’s universe and the main characters while giving the audience enough time to feel the suspense before it reaches its climax. For some, this may come across as being slow, but there is plenty of validity to that opinion; this film does take a little while to settle into itself. Once Grace sees that her family members are all-in on this ritual, the tone of the movie shifts from a dark comedy to a tense thriller, and things start to come together. The ensemble cast also does a fantastic job of portraying each member’s own individual responses to the evil passed down from past generations. There are those who enthusiastically participate in the hunt because they “believe” in the ritual. There are others who participate because they’re terrified of what will happen if they don’t. There are even a couple of family members who are somewhat sympathetic and/or lack a desire to hunt their niece (i.e., Grace), and yet, they’re still portrayed in a sufficiently complex manner to not appear as simply evil. The family’s dysfunction — the drinking, the arguing, the petty jealousies — plays out in the background while Grace is fighting for her life, and the contrast between her desperation and their casual cruelty is where most of the dark humor lives. And it is genuinely funny. That is the part that surprises you most. Ready or Not earns real laughter, but the kind that makes you pause right after and ask yourself why you just laughed at that. Someone gets hurt. Something goes terribly wrong. And before you can stop yourself, you are laughing — and then immediately feeling strange about it. That is the specific skill of dark comedy done well. It does not let you feel comfortable. It holds the humor and the horror in the same hand and forces you to hold both at once. The entire film hinges on the performance of Samara Weaving as Grace, who is not portrayed as a prop to invoke fear or as a damsel in distress but as a complex and complete human being. Although she is scared, she is still able to think clearly and adapt. In addition to being fearful, she has blood on her body, rips her dress, loses her footwear, uses weapons she has never used before, and keeps going. Throughout the film, Weaving moves from panic to dark comedy to rage to sadness while portraying a woman who has grown into an icon before your eyes. This is an incredible performance, especially when you consider that the film could easily have been wasted on it. The film also carries a sharp social edge that rewards you if you are paying attention. There is something pointed about the way it frames extreme wealth as its own kind of madness. These are people so removed from ordinary consequences that they will commit murder to protect a family tradition most of them do not even fully believe in anymore. They participate in this activity because it has been part of culture since human beings were created. To stop the activity would require them to examine what they’ve built as a part of their society. This common thread of questioning within the overall context of the film does not slow the pacing of the movie down at all. The movie does ask if rich people commit horrible acts because they truly believe it is acceptable to do so, or just because they are wealthy and don’t have any need for a reason not to commit acts that are wrong? It is worth noting that around this same time, another film with a similar premise (The Hunt from Blumhouse Pictures), wealthy people hunting regular people for sport, was pulled before release because of public outcry over its content. Ready or Not survived. Whether that says something about the studios, the politics of the moment, or just the difference between satire and shock value is a conversation worth having on your way out of the theater. What is not up for debate is the result. Ready or Not is a sharp, bloody, brilliantly paced dark comedy that announces Samara Weaving as a force, confirms Radio Silence as directors worth following, and gives audiences exactly what they did not know they needed: a bride in a ruined dress refusing to die quietly. Grace did not come to play. But she won anyway.

OUR RATING – A DARK HUMOR 8

Media

• Genre – Thriller
• Street date
• Digital – November 26^th 2019
• DVD/Blu-Ray – December 3^rd 2019
• Video – 1080p
• Screen size – 2.39:1
• Sound – English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, English Descriptive Audio 5.1, Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1, French Dolby Digital 5.1
• Subtitles – English SDH, Spanish, French

Extras

• Let the Games Begin: The Making of READY OR NOT
• Gag Reel
• Audio Commentary by Radio Silence and Samara Weaving