Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (2026)

I know somebody's out there. Ready or not to Here I Come, directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, written by Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy, and starring Samara Weaving, Catherine Newton, Elijah Wood, and Sarah Michelle Gellar. In the sequel to the 2019 film, our main character Grace, who has just survived her wedding night after her in-laws tried to kill her as part of some kind of satanic ritual, must once again play hide and seek, but this time from a group of power-hungry devil worshippers. If you are new to our show, Brian and I are going to have a spoiler-free discussion for the first 10 to 15 minutes, then we'll take a quick break, and then we'll come back, we'll jump into the plot, spoil the film, and give our review. And this episode, like all of our episodes, is brought to you by the support of our Patreon members. Thank you all for your support. If you want to support the show, you can do so by going to our website or movieclub.com finding the orange button at the top and for as little as $3 a month you can get access to bonus episodes every month a library of all of our old episodes and some videos that Brian and I have done through the years so check that out if you get a chance Brian, how excited were you for the sequel of Ready or Not? You know, whatever the neutral amount of excited is. I really enjoyed the first Ready or Not, but I remember just thinking that was really fun and I'll probably never watch it again. I think it's just kind of a light, shallow sounds insulting, but there's nothing huge to it. It's not a very significant movie, but that's not to say it wasn't fun or entertaining. So that was how I felt about the first one, and I try my hardest to not think too much about the sequel because I don't want to get my hopes up. I wasn't particularly excited to see it, but I didn't necessarily think it was going to suck. How did you feel? A little less excited than you were in terms of a little below neutral, I guess. I think this one, kind of like Megan a few years ago, you watch those films, they're fun in its moment. I don't feel like there's anything memorable or really sequel-worthy about these films. So when I saw these trailers start coming out a few months ago, So part of me was dreading and wondering why did we need a whole other run at this story here. And from the trailers, I could get the sense that it was going to be a similar setup. And yeah, I don't know if it was needed. And this one, such a long gap, like six years from the last one, right? Seven. Oh, shit. Seven years. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, right. 2019. That's a minute. Yeah, I know. It is interesting that they chose to do it again. Now, I think the interesting thing that happened is that Matt Bednelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett were developing an original movie with a sister story intended for Catherine Newton and Samara Weaving to star in. And then, like, the studio approached them about a sequel to Ready or Not. So then they adapted, you know, adjusted their existing idea into Ready or Not 2 with the two of them as sisters. and they had already worked with Catherine Newton before on Abigail. Yeah. That's kind of crazy. It kind of shows how malleable some of these stories are and how they can just be fit into a franchise at a studio as well. Yeah. Is that concerning or not? I don't know. I think also, too, when you're kind of an experienced writer, I imagine it's not as big of an ordeal to be like, all right, let's change some things around. us. Like if I were writing a script and someone said to like shift it all around, I'd be like, yeah, that's interesting to see be a fly on the wall for that creative process. Yeah. Is that a credit or is that like a questionable, like artistic integrity of like, if they had this original story and film that they were going to pull out, what do they sacrifice? Like throw this back into the formula or the formula of Ready or Not? Yeah. Right. I guess I don't know how fleshed out that idea was. I don't know if they had a completed script or if it was just kind of a pitch at that point or a rough outline. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I think in this phase of where we are in the whole battle with AI and originality being at such a premium these days, trying to squeeze a story into a formula of ready or not kind of bums me out that they felt like they had to do that. And I get it. Obviously, there's a lot of marketing benefits of putting it into an existing franchise versus a standalone film. That's got to be the reason they did this, right? Yeah, for sure. I mean, it is kind of built-in marketing. I can't speak to whether or not they for sure did that. I'm sure that's what the studio wanted, like, hey, a sequel. But yeah, it's cool that they at least got Samara Weaving back. Yep. It would have been nothing. I mean, without her, it would have been like, okay, what are we really doing? Yeah, that would have been weird. And yeah, huge cast in this one. so I think that's like your typical franchise plays. Let's bring back the main character and add a bunch of fresh faces. I mean, Sarah Michelle Gellar, I feel like she was off my radar until last summer with I Know What You Did last summer, that movie coming back, right? Yes. And now she's back in the mix? I like already forgot that that movie came back. Well, it just dropped on Netflix in case you want to remind yourself of it. Yeah, I know. That was a forgettable one. But it's cool she's making a comeback in horror a little bit. And I feel like she carries that kind of reputation with her when you see her on screen. But forgive my forgetfulness. I mean, I guess no one could blame me for dropping that movie out of my memory. But she wasn't in that movie, right? Except for, oh, she was in a weird little flashback. Yeah. I remember now the setup. Yeah, I think so. I'm pretty sure that was there. Yeah. Yes. So, yeah, she's popping up in more places these days, which is good for her. You know, we talked about this a little bit. I mean, we just did a slasher episode on Patreon. So in case you want to try to figure out what the first slasher was, sign up for our Patreon and listen to that episode. I don't know if we get a real answer there, but we have a good discussion about some early slashers. We've got three possible answers, I think. Yeah, exactly. Some different, yeah, depending on the day, I guess. Yeah, depending on the day. We each came to a different conclusion, it seemed. And we brought up, I know what you did last summer a couple of times, I think. Oh, yeah, we did. Right. And I feel like we talked about this film briefly, like Ready or Not, this type of film where, you know, this one, you're next, The Hunt. I feel like they fit in this subgenre of rich people trying to kill like a woman, or I was going to say more of like a rational or ... I want to say like a blue claw person, but like an everyday person, right? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. The ultra wealthy trying to kill the everyday folk. Yeah. This one even more so reminded me of The Hunt than the other one did because it starts out, I mean, it doesn't begin like this, but there's a moment where the two sisters come to out on a golf course and that's very similar to The Hunt. Oh, yeah. Right. And the killers are even called hunters in this one. Yeah, right, exactly. Funny how we just had this streak of these very similar stories. But yeah, they are kind of like reverse slashers. Instead of one person killing many people, it's many people trying to kill one person. Yeah, not only is it one person, in a few instances it is Samara Weaving. So like the Ready or Nots, both of them. Remember Mayhem? That was also Samara Weaving. I feel like she's got a genre of people always trying to kill her and surviving it. Almost like a, kind of like a diehard type vibe where, you know, even in this one, she's like asking for a cigarette half the time. I feel like she's kind of like a modern day, like Bruce Willis. Yeah. She's maybe a little, got a little bit of John McClane in her, but Mayhem was like a borderline zombie movie. Yeah. I guess zombies trying to kill you something different. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Then she was in Azrael, which, hmm, was a little bit, that movie's foggy in my memory, But yeah, she's a scream queen, undeniably. She's been in a lot of horror movies already. Yeah, yeah. The Babysitter, she was briefly in Scream. Was that Five Cream? Oh, yeah. Right. Five or six, one of those, yeah. One of the two. Yeah. No, she's really built up a name and a following there. But you're next, The Hunt, Ready or Not. It tends to be a woman with blonde hair getting attacked by a number of elitists. What do you think of this? A woman with blonde hair getting attacked by a bunch of elitists. Yeah, sure. Did the final girl in Your Next have blonde hair? It was like brownish. Yeah, it's not bad. I think that cracks your theory. I'm pretty sure that was just straight brown. All right, all right. Fair enough. Okay, I think you burst the bubble on that one. But these stories, I don't know if there's a name for this genre. And then is it kind of like the opposite of Deliverance, where you have a bunch of, well, or like any hillbilly horror. Is this hillbilly horror kind of reversed? Oh, interesting. Yeah, like a culture class of the city folk meeting the backwards country folk and seeing if you can survive on their terms. And now it's more like a regular person coming across the super wealthy people and seeing if you can survive on their weird twisted terms. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. You think there's a name to this genre? I don't think there is a name to this genre. You got one? Survivalist? That's the second time you've tried to Quit trying to make fetch happen Because all they've got to do is just survive in these movies Make it through the night And generally things work out You could call a wide variety of horror movies Survivalists under that definition Make it through the night Evil Dead would be the same Yeah Mini vampire film Yeah, I don't know It's interesting It's really just kind of a little microcosm. It's not like there's a wide swath of movies. It was just like a few that came out all at once. Okay, yeah. Abigail's a little bit like that. Oh, yeah, true. Yeah, you got a group of people being stalked. Though Abigail, isn't it like really just one killer coming after them all? Is that more like a traditional? Yeah. Yeah, but you've got kind of like an ultra-wealthy conspiracy type thing. Okay. Yeah, and a lot of similar people behind the scenes here and on screen from Abigail. So fun to see that. But one thing that really bums me out, have you heard of a movie called They Will Kill You? Yeah, it's in theaters right now. Yeah, and I think similar genre. It's Zazie Beetz, and she's in an apartment building getting attacked by a bunch of people. And I'm so bummed that we're here talking about, ready or not, this franchise cheap play by a studio versus an independent standalone film like that. Are you going to check that one out? I don't think I will. Well, maybe before the end of the year, but it's rare for me to get some more than one theatrical viewing in a month. Boy, I could tell like right off the bat, even before we started recording that you had a bee in your bonnet about this movie. I have to wonder if you gave it a fair chance. I feel like you were pissed about it before you even sat down in the theater. You know, sometimes being pissed about it before puts you at a lower spot so you can be more impressed by the time you get to the end. Okay. All right. So this could reverse itself. but I am a little disappointed though that we're not checking out They Will Kill You and I would encourage people to check that out because the box office on that's been pretty low versus this one but I feel like we've got to give these standalone films more of a chance too. Did you see They Will Kill You? No, I need to check that one out. But I was very angry at myself after I bought a ticket for this one. You know, I mean, people are frustrated, and they're not wrong. Hollywood is churning out a whole bunch of sequels, and it feels like there's not as much original stuff as there used to be. There definitely is not. But you still get these really cool original horror films, like we're in the era of sinners and weapons and even companion from last year. Yeah. You know, it's not like we're not getting any of these things at all. But, yeah, there's still a whole lot of just piggybacking off of existing IP, making safe bets. I'm not really trying to push back and say, no, that's not the narrative. But I don't feel like it's the narrative so much so that we need to go tell people to watch some standalone movie that we have no idea if it's actually good or not. Yeah, I don't know, man. I feel like independent, yeah, standalone, give like new movies a shot. a shot, otherwise we might come into an area where ... Yeah, you're right, we do have standalone films, but we have so many sequels too. Not to say sequels are bad, I mean we both liked ... What was it last year? Final Destination. That's this year already. Yeah. Final Destination Bloodlines, yeah. They can work, they can be good, especially here. You've got all the same people returning. So I feel like I'm less likely to be cynical about it when it's the entire team getting back together. Yeah, sure. Well, yeah, I think a lot of people agree with you. I think it's doing fairly well on a budget of $14 million. It's made $33.5 million. So doing pretty good. I guess that's like two weeks in. Yeah, I don't know that that really is all that good because it's got to triple its budget. That's the old saying, at least, to make its money back. and it has not done that, and we are recording this later than we usually record new releases. I feel like it'll be out for almost three weeks by the time the episode comes out, so I don't think it's going to hit that triplets budget number, I would guess. Do you happen to remember what the last one, the first one made? Maybe that one, I'm guessing, was a breakout hit or something. I don't remember what it made, but maybe I'll check real quick while you keep talking about something. Go! Yeah. Well, review-wise, it's got a 73% Rotten Tomatoes, so pretty favorable there. And audiences are eating it up, 90%. So performing pretty well. People seem pretty happy with this film. The audience is pleased. The last film had a budget of $6 million, and its box office was almost 10 times that number at $57.6 million. So it probably will land at having made about $20 million more than the sequel. Oh, holy shit. half the budget. Okay, yeah, not a good call. Yeah, I guess, for some reason I thought it was double the budget that you had to get to recover your expenses. Well, you could be confusing it with the fact that typically they say half of the box office goes to the theater and half to the distributor. So, you basically take half of the box office as what's going to the theater. And then there's like publicity and advertising costs that aren't usually included in that budget number, so that's why they go triple. Yeah, yeah, gotcha. Damn, well, yeah, we'll see if there's going to be a part three. Let's see, I think that was all the background I had. What else you got on this? I don't think I have anything too interesting to add, other than the fact that Elijah Woods starred with Samara Weaving's uncle, Hugo Weaving, in the Lord of the Rings movies. He was Elrond. Oh, yeah, cool. He's also the guy from The Matrix, right? Yes, yeah. Agent Smith? Agent Smith, and he's the voice of V in V for Vendetta. Oh, cool. Yeah, I don't think I realized that she had that relation until a few weeks ago. Yeah, I didn't know that either. And a ring is also of some importance in this film. The ring? The movie? Oh, yeah. A ring, yeah. Just like Lord of the Rings. Sure. And there's another similarity to Lord of the Rings too that I won't spoil, but it's towards the conclusion of this movie. Yeah, these guys, the only thing I'd add is they have a very specific tone lately. The tone of Abigail is similar to the tone of both Ready or Not movies. Even in Abigail, you've got bloody explosions and people being hunted in a mansion, owned by wealthy people. Yeah. Yeah, which is a far away that they've come from VHS. Which segment did these guys do in VHS? They did 10-31-98. It's where the guys kind of go into that haunted house and it ends on the train track. That one's a different tone, but it's not like super dark or anything. That's true, yeah. It's got its moments of like levity in there. Yeah, and then Scream 5 and 6 certainly aren't super dark either. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they've definitely gotten a little bit lighter through the years. Like this movie's like a, what, the tags are like horror comedy, right, on this? Yes. Yeah, I would definitely call this a horror comedy. And then speaking of, you mentioned Final Destination Bloodlines being good. Guy Busiek, one of the writers here, co-wrote Final Destination Bloodlines as well. Yeah, I think Guy Busiek, I feel like he's been on a lot of sequels. Did he do some of the screams as well? Yeah, I mean, he's worked with the Radio Silence guys a lot. Yeah. Radio Silence being Tyler Gillett, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, and their buddy, who's their buddy? I can't remember his name. Chad Vieja, who served as an EP on this film. Okay. But yeah, they all kind of, those writers have worked with them a few times. So Guy Music co-wrote Ready or Not, Scream 5, Scream 6, Bloodlines, and Scream 7, actually, which I think maybe the Radio Silence guys might have been executive producers on, but weren't on the creative team. I think I will shout out some new patrons and then get into our Ohio connection. So thank you to these new patrons, Back From Hell With Sarcasm, Julia Y., Ben, Trevor D., Shut Up, Lena, Rolo, and Ophira. And a correction, in this scary movie episode, I said that that was a request from Randy, but it was actually a request from R. I got my R's mixed up. Yeah. Sorry, R. Some people have like three, multiple different handles. They'll be on Discord as one name, Patreon as another, Facebook as another, and I get a little confused sometimes. Oh, man. So my apologies. Yeah. I also thought it was Randy because like Scary Movies Scream, Scream's got that Randy character. When you said that, it made sense. Sure. Right. But thanks, R. To an Ashwin brain, that totally makes sense. Yep. Um, let's see. That was really insulting. I apologize. You've got a great brand. Oh, hey, thanks, man. I work it out a bit. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so let's see. The Ohio Connection. Right. That, as always, comes from our buddy Alex, who owns the Jukebox Bar and Restaurant in Cleveland, Ohio. And Jukebox is a proper restaurant. Again, they just had their kitchen remodel finished after a fire that destroyed their kitchen, so they're back in action making all their old favorites. The burgers are great. The pierogi are great. So swing by jukebox if you're in Northeast Ohio. And Alex says, Ready or not to Here I Come is a comedy horror film sequel which picks up directly after the events of the first film following two sisters as they are hunted by several elite families in a high-stakes ritual to claim a seat of ultimate power. The film was co-produced by established film producer Tripp Vinson. Vinson is best known for producing the films Baywatch, San Andreas, The Number 23, Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters and the 2012 action sci-fi film Journey to the Mysterious Island starring Dwayne the Rock Johnson and Josh Hutcherson. This film opens with Hutcherson's character being caught by police following a high-speed dirt bike pursuit. While it is not specified in the final cut of the film, early scripts indicate the film opens in suburban Ohio. Wow. That felt like it might have taken some digging to get that. Yeah, yeah. Wow, that's a long way to go. It certainly is a long way to go. Yeah, a possible scene. Not a confirmed setting, but most likely took place in Ohio. I think early versions of the script may have mentioned that it was a suburb of Ohio is what I'm understanding. Wow. Deep dig, Alex. I like it. Yes. Good job, Alex. Yeah. Awesome. Well, anything else? Are you ready to jump into the plot? Let's get into the plot. Okay, cool. Let's do it. Oh, shoot. back yeah sure all right i'll be right back hey brian sorry about that i'm back hey buddy everything okay yeah you know i was watching uh this final game of March Vadness which is ending tonight And yeah I know Right I know right I realized I had to make a call and call the NCAA and let them know to let the Michigan Wolverines win. I got voicemail, but we'll see what happens. You're pulling some strings. Yeah, yeah. They're not going to know who I am, but it's, yeah, I don't know. Are you watching any of those by any chance? Worth a shot. I never do. I don't know why. It just feels daunting to me and I don't get into it. I don't really make time to watch many sports other than baseball. Yeah. Baseball's a time-consuming one. It is, but it's on all the time for six months, so you can always catch some of it. Oh, yeah. That makes it easy. Less FOMO, I guess, since ... Yeah, you just can't watch every game, or even one complete game, because they've gotten shorter, but they're like two hours and 45 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. I hear you. I'm not watching any of these games either. I had to Google. I had a feeling it was going on right now. I guess tonight is the finals for that thing. And here we are doing this instead. I know. Yeah. A bunch of dorks. So this movie opens picking up where the first movie ended. We see our main character, Grace. She's standing in front of her in-law's mansion that's just exploded and everyone in there is dead. And she's in her wedding dress covered in blood. She's smoking a cigarette. Police and paramedics arrive and escort her to the hospital. where her emergency contact shows up, and it's her estranged younger sister, Faith, who Grace hasn't seen in years, and we learn that they have a complicated relationship since years ago Grace abandoned Faith to move to New York. What did you think of this intro into the film and the introduction of a new character here? I thought the intro was cool because I really like something about a sequel that picks up literally like the minute where the last one left off. So I appreciated that approach. And then I like the camera work here. We're kind of right in on her face, and then it goes like Dutch angle sideways as she turns, like falls onto the pavement, and the camera just sticks right up in her face, all one shot after she passes out and is put on a gurney and taken into the ambulance. She's in cardiac arrest, and she's defibrillated back to life. And then with each shock, There's a brief flashback to the last film, which is, you know, I guess a nice little way to give us a reminder of what happened last time. But I just thought that was a cool, cool choice cinematographically, if that's a word, to be right up on her face as she's being moved all around and jostled on the gurney and loaded into the ambulance. So it added some tension. Yeah, I agree. I loved this. Good continuity from the first film. And yeah, that camera angle sticking on her face. And like, yeah, we know there's all this like stuff going on in the background, police, paramedics, her like being put in an ambulance stuff. But like just staying focused on her face, such a great move for them to do. And then the scoring here, I think they're playing that song. Is it called Will You Still Love Me? Yeah, like, will you still love me? Yeah. Tomorrow. I'm going to sing the whole song. Tomorrow is the next part, but I didn't want to keep singing. Yeah, I know. One of those, the title of that song's in one of those words. Yeah, right. It's probably one of those songs where the title's totally different and we sound like idiots. Exactly. Yeah, that song comes back, I think, at the end of the film, too. It does, yeah. Yeah. But I like this opening. Good way to bring us back into this universe. And yeah, I liked Faith, too. This was a cool character to bring in. And her intro kind of, again, gives Grace a chance to quickly kind of summarize what happened in the last movie. And I think she's a cool character for you kind of pick up on that tension between them right away, right? Yeah, and you're always more down with more conflict-based relationships than I am. But I felt like even with their tense past, they were just like so mean to each other that it was hard for me to buy at some point. Like she just died momentarily and is, you know, presumably going to be OK. But I don't know. I would think no matter how out of touch you are with your family, if they had just like flatlined for a minute and come back to life, you wouldn't come in there being a jerk. Yeah. So that was a little bit hard for me to buy into. And I really like Catherine Newton and I liked her in this movie. But when she walked in, I was kind of worried. She's like chomping on gum. I feel like her on-screen presence is kind of the same all the time. Yeah. I can't decide if I still feel that way by the end of the movie because I came around on her as a character, but I don't know. There's plenty of great actors who were like that, like a Tom Hanks type where it's like you're the same guy in every movie. I wonder if Catherine Newton is kind of becoming that, but I need to see more of her films. Yeah, like between this, Abigail, and Freaky, you kind of feel like we're getting a similar performance. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, I hear you. I think I feel similarly. But I think I believed her character here. And yeah, I mean, she's an interesting role because I think she's showing up to care. And like we immediately learned like she's actually lived in New York City this whole time, but like has never kind of like sought out grace, even though like they lived in the same city. So I found it easy to believe, like, for all intents and purposes, like, they kind of, like, were, like, just considered each other, like, dead or, like, outside of their lives. So I could see her, like, now popping back up and, like, not caring that much. You know, she's just here, really, because she was in emergency contact, which she says multiple times throughout the film. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah, it's been a long time. It's been years. Yep. So, and, yeah, then this film, I think, really harps on, or, like, yeah, it really focuses on this, like, conflict between them. and it's kind of like a storyline that's going on in the background as they go through the next adventures together. Right. So we then jump to the Danforth estate, some other rich dude in the area somewhere. And he is the head of a family. His name is Chester. He's played by David Cronenberg. And he's under medical care and flexing his power. There's a war on TV and he picks up the phone and tells them to call for a ceasefire. and minutes later we see breaking news alert that a ceasefire has been called. So some humor here in how much power this guy has. I guess he skips the voicemail when he calls. Yeah, right. He's got higher priorities than the final four. Yeah, damn, good for him. Chester gets approached by a lawyer, played by Elijah Wood, who tells him, and he's basically a lawyer for Satan, I guess, and he tells Chester that the Le Demas family is dead. That was Grace's in-laws from the first film. When Chester finds this out, he summons his children and he sends out a text to the heads of five other families who live across the world. His children, Titus and Ursula, come to his bedside and he gives them the family ring that he's wearing and tells them that they need to do what they have to do to keep the ring in the family. and then the two kids suffocate Chester with a fancy pillow. Meanwhile, the families that he sent a message to now make their way to the Danforth complex. One of them, this guy named Bill who does a lot of coke, he goes straight to the hospital. He finds Grace who's in the process of being led out to the police station for questioning and attacks her, kills the police officer. But before he can kill her, his body explodes. Grace and Faith try to escape the hospital, but they get intercepted by the lawyer who tear gases them. And when he sees Bill dead, he kind of calls out that, oh, Bill broke the rules, and that's why his body exploded. So, yeah, I'd forgotten about the body explosions and how big of a punch that was in the first film. But fun to get that back here. What did you think of this hospital scene? I thought it was pretty good. Although it's maybe a little silly, but I'm fine with it. She's like, I can't fight in this gown. And she, like, takes out her bloody wedding dress from the police evidence bag and puts that back on. It's like, can you fight that much better in a wedding dress? But, you know, it's kind of iconic from the first film, so no problem getting that back in. And then, yeah, happy to see David Cronenberg and Elijah Wood. Elijah Wood's great in this. And so is David Cronenberg, but he's in it so briefly. So, yeah, I like it. I kind of like that, I don't know, the route they're going with the sequel, it's not anything like wildly creative or surprising, but it just feels logical, especially nowadays. It's like whack-a-mole with evil rich people. Like they're not acting in a vacuum, right? They've got all these other wealthy people they're connected to who are in on it as well. So it's just kind of fitting with the times we're in right now that this is how the plot expands. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And when we talk about why these guys are all here, I do like the rationale for this scenario being there. And yeah, I also love her putting on the wedding dress. I think that's a cool costume almost from the first film, this bloodied wedding dress. That's become a cool sign of this franchise. Yeah, I mean it's almost kind of similar to John McClane in his white tank top. Yeah, we don't call them wife beaters anymore. Oh, really? Did we move past that finally? I don't know what they're called, though, because they're not really a white tank top. Like, it's a very distinct type of thing. I mean, yeah, the wife beater is very evocative of what that is. But anyway, like, McLean's got the wife beater and no shoes. And I feel like Grace has her bloody, bloody wedding dress. Yeah, yeah, I like that. That's cool. so oh and I liked it I thought the hospital scene had some good like suspense and tenseness as like people are hiding in different parts and like that guy is creeping around I think yeah compared to like a lot of the other kills in this movie like this one they kind of had like a good amount of suspense and scare with it the like promise of the premise you know it's called ready or not implying hide and seek and it very much is a like cat and mouse hide and seek type situation in both films yeah I feel like this kill Well, and we'll go through all the kills, but I feel like this one has the most sneaking up on someone. I feel like later on in the film when she confronts my people, they just reveal themselves, and it's more hand-to-hand combat kind of thing. Sure, yeah. It starts to get just one after the other, which ups the intensity, but yeah, it makes it a little less suspenseful. Yeah. So, we now get to the Danforth complex, where all these heads of families have gathered, And now Grace and Faith are brought in there and tied up in the middle of the room. The lawyer now explains that since the Ladomas... Ladomas? I think Ladomas is how they're saying it in the movie. Since the Ladomas family was killed, the seat of power across the Satanists is up for grabs. I guess that's one of the rules here, where if someone wins that game of Ready or Not, or whatever game that gets chosen on a wedding night, and the family loses, then suddenly whoever holds the ring has to kind of like put it up for jeopardy again or put it up for play again and any family can kind of like has a chance to claim it, which that's kind of fun. Yeah, basically it sounded like the bride surviving that game from the first film triggered some clause where the high seat on the council is now up for grabs and even she can win it, even Grace could win it. Oh yeah, right, right. Yeah, that's really cool. if no one kills her oh so yeah the way to get that seat now is whoever kills Grace before Dawn will become the heir to that throne or as you mentioned if no one kills her then Grace becomes it and if no one's wearing that ring by Dawn Satan is going to be pissed and then there are some like rules like the families can't kill one another and only one member from each family can be in the field at one time so yeah I liked this like the first film was the family just has to kill her before dawn otherwise they die and that's like the interest of survival of the family this time it's i feel like the stakes are a little amped up here with uh with this premise right yeah for sure and she could have stand to gain a lot too yeah yeah it's cool i isn't it crazy that like uh satan would be out there like writing up all these rules uh and like how like the throne gets passed down and stuff and like creating these games it seems like very structured. And yeah, I'm just surprised that that's like a thing we're supposed to buy into that like hell has like, like this guy who runs hell supposedly has like such a bureaucratic system. I guess that's what I'm a little confused about. And I know some people are kind of lore hounds for movies and might get upset when we don't digest the lore quite as well as others do. But I can't understand if Labelle is Satan or just a demon. Yeah. Good point. He's like the antagonist behind the scenes, like a supernatural dude. But I think that he's, yeah, I don't know if they actually come out and say it for sure. That's true. Like he could be a long lost relative who's now a demon. He could be the devil himself. Yeah. Okay. Well, yeah, he's a guy who likes a good law book, I guess. Yeah, he's into lore. He's into games. So here, I think in the first one, I'm reading up on this a little bit now as we talk. Victor Lodomas was a merchant sailor, so like this ancestor of the Lodomas family. And during one of his voyages, he played a game of chance and met Labelle. And he won the game and he received the magic black box from Labelle. So, you know, it's almost like a demon you encounter. I don't know. It almost has like a deal with the devil type vibe. So it could be the devil, it could be some just random demon. Okay. That makes a lot more sense. Got it. All right. Thanks for clarifying that. But I think the devil, in a lot of stories, the devil is into various contracts and promises. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, he's usually one to make some bargains and stuff. I feel like all these stories are just like low-key veiled disses at lawyers. I know. They get a bad rap here. I was thinking this guy's basically like the devil's advocate, right? Yeah, Elijah Wood is basically like the devil's lawyer. Yep, yep. So, yeah, the rules are out there. It's a fun cast. I like this mix of characters between the heads of the families. Pretty diverse group there and all kind of funny and quirky. Yeah, everyone has their own quirks. It's funny, the humor with these movies, it's a very specific tone. It never veers into hilarity, but just kind of light humor throughout. Yeah. Yeah, right. Yeah, that's the thing. When we got to the end of this, I was wondering, were there any jokes or anything? But yeah, it's more kind of making fun maybe at some of your typical stereotype characters or something. Yeah, and the way the two sisters talk to each other. My husband stabbed me and then everyone blew up. And her sister's like, oh, you're so going to jail. Yeah. It's not like funny funny, but it's humorous, I guess. Yeah, like a dry humor or something. Yeah, it's a little bit of a dry but irreverent and kind of gross. Yep. Okay. Gross being like splattery. Yeah, yep. Grace and Faith are drugged and they wake up in the middle of a golf course and the game has started. So you've got four or five people, I guess five people, well yeah, five people on the field who are coming to kill them. They get chased into the woods by Titus and Ursula. In the woods, they get the upper hand on Titus and hit him with a stick before running into this casino that's on the property. At the casino, they get approached by one of the heads of the families, Chen, who says there's a loophole in the contract. And it turns out if Grace marries Chen's son, then they won't have to kill Grace. Grace isn't into this proposal because she doesn't want to be a part of this cult. and suddenly they get attacked by one of the other family member heads, Ignacio, who starts shooting at them with a sniper. As he approaches them, Grace grabs Chen's arm and forces her to stab Ignacio, which kills him, and because of the rule that the players aren't allowed to kill one another, Chen also explodes here. Hey, I was surprised. One of the things when the game starts, the lawyer says you can only take weapons that existed when your ancestors started this game, right? And Ignacio's got a sniper rifle, and someone else in his family later has Uzis and stuff. And a bazooka. How did they get past that? Well, I think each family made a deal with Labelle at different times in history. So that family probably didn't encounter Labelle until fairly recently. So they may be the newest members of the council. Oh, okay. So that lets them bring in more modern weaponry. Yeah, so everyone has weapons that are contemporary to the period in which their family met LaBelle. Ah, okay, good to know. Cool. Which I think is just a fun way to add diversity to the weapons. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was a nice twist. I don't remember seeing that kind of arsenal of weapons in the first film. So Grace and Faith now run into this other building. Oh no, they're still in the casino, but they're getting chased now by one of the other family heads, this guy named Viraj who is wearing this badass mask and carrying a sword. He chases them into a basement where they manage to shove him into a commercial washing machine that melts him down. They then use his phone to call the police but the call is intercepted by Ursula who has the phones on the property locked down. Grace and Faith find Titus and Ursula waiting at the gates and overpower them and tell them they need to open the gates. At this point, though, Viraj's brother's wife, who has now been granted all the power because Viraj's brother didn't want to come and play the game and he wanted to stay back at the mansion and eat some ice cream, she comes speeding at them in a car and crashes through the gate and takes off into the night. So she's obviously just abandoning the game, but in doing so, she's opened the gates. In this chaos, Ursula stabs Grace, but Faith comes back and saves Grace and the two of them make it back inside to one of the properties into like a ballroom. I was so stunned here that like they were holding Ursula and Titus at like gunpoint and hostage and like why they wouldn't just have like be killing everyone they're seeing on sight. Were you surprised by that? Yeah, that was surprising. I feel like, was there a reason for that? They were asking them to open the gate but it's like just, wouldn't it be better to like killed these two and then just like climb the gate. Then figure out a way to get over the gate. That looked like a difficult gate to climb. I've tried to climb a similar gate. I can't remember if I told this story on the podcast before, but I was trying to climb a gate just like as a shortcut because I had gone the wrong way down the road and didn't want to look like an idiot before I had a smartphone. I was like, oh no, this is definitely the way to this party. I was drunk. And I climbed it and it's like those metal poles that go all the way up and then like one crossbar at the top and then like another foot of vertical pulls up above that crossbar. And I got up there and put my foot on the crossbar to like spring off the top, like jump down, but my foot got wedged in between, stayed up there, and then my weight fell down while my foot stayed up top and then I broke my ankle real bad. Yeah. And then you were in like a cast for a while, right? It was like a year of recovery. I mean, my ankle still is not the same. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. At least you didn't look like a jackass like going to that party, right? Yeah, right. At least I looked like I knew where I was going. Yeah, I know. That could have been really embarrassing for you guys. In front of one of my closest friends from high school, too. No reason I would be impressing him. Yeah. That's quite an impression. Yeah. So, yeah, don't drink alcohol and try to jump a fence. But I also am more on board with their plan to not kill them so they can figure out how to open the gate. Okay. So you bought this. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe they've had past ankle trauma. Okay. There's a, you know, meanwhile in the past ankle trauma survivors, there's like a group. Yeah. My name is Brian. I'm a survivor of ankle, drunken ankle trauma. So throughout the background of this, there's a lot of dialogue going on, obviously between grace and faith, where they're talking about trying to understand why grace abandoned faith so many years ago and trying to reconcile their hostilities towards one another. And then Titus and Ursula kind of egging them on. Ursula, when she's in the woods, she's saying, come out, come out. We're not actually bad guys. It's something we have to do. And then in this scene, too, Titus is kind of egging them on, being like, oh, so why did you leave? I feel like they're trying to verbally get under each other's skin. And I don know if that working or even I feel like it pulls me out of the scare that hey these are people to kill each other Why are you like having a conversation trying to get in each other heads in these fights Does that bother you at all? That's interesting. Well, it's implied multiple times that Titus is like a legit psychopath and he has a really messed up relationship with his dad and twin sister. So I think he's kind of using his own like painful relationships and insecurities about his sibling relationship and leveraging those as a way to say, hey, I know you two surely have this kind of stuff going on. I'm going to use it against you. Just try to, I don't know, turn those emotional screws a little bit just to torture you. But yeah, he really has no practical reason for it. There are definitely times where someone could have just killed someone and had it be over with. But this is movie making. I guess, yeah. You've got to have some taunting going on. Exactly. The villain's got to have a speech or two or three. Yeah, exactly. Oh, man. Bringing up, you just reminded me, the twin sister thing. Wasn't Sarah Michelle Gellar a twin sister in Cruel Intentions? Or were they not twins? I don't think so. Okay. Were there twins in a Cruel Intentions sequel? Yeah, two. Twins. That's typically how the twin situation goes. No, I thought her and Ryan Felipe were somehow- Oh, were they twin siblings? There were some kind of siblings. Maybe they were. Yeah. Honestly, I haven't seen that movie since it came out. I don't even think I saw it when it came out. And I only remember the iconic kiss and nothing else from the movie. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She's always playing like a stepsister or some kind of sister in a movie. Yeah. Okay. They were stepsisters. Stepsiblings. Oh, okay. They probably made it. Yeah. Made conditions a little more. something. Yeah, she was stuck under the couch or something. Yeah, one of those scenarios. At the property, Grace gets mad at Faith for not escaping through the gates when she had the chance. Oh yeah, they're like in this ballroom now. And so yeah, Grace kind of lets go on Faith, yells at her and Faith is like, fuck this. And she walks out on her. As she's leaving though, Faith changes her mind and starts to head back to Grace, but then gets attacked by Titus, who just starts going to town beating her up. Meanwhile, Grace now gets attacked by Ignatius. Shit, that's not how we were saying it before, right? Ignatius? Well, yeah, and isn't he dead? Yeah, he's dead. So he gets attacked by Ignatius next of kin, his daughter Francesca, who happens to also be Grace's ex-husband's ex-fiance. So she's got even more of a motive here to hate Grace. so uh this is kind of a funny fight because like they both start off by spraying each other with mace and then they're like kind of fighting blindly while um the song is blasting in the background total eclipse of my heart which is a funny track uh but eventually grace knocks her out with the keyboard um so uh i i liked this battle this this fight but the the scene because like it was you're bouncing back between this battle and then uh titus just like beating up faith and that that battle got really boring to me like how he was just kind of like punching her and taunting her and then punching her some more and kicking her and he's like you know i'm gonna kill you and then like it just felt like very like a cartoon movie or something well it was also kind of hard to watch for some reason just brutal beatings that go on for a long time are hard for me to watch and they start to take you out of it because it's like okay she would be dead or unconscious like five hits ago. I mean, and that's a very diehard thing too. Everyone sustains injuries that would have put them in a coma multiple times over. Yeah, so much internal bleeding. Yeah. Yeah, that was a bit much. And yeah, it is kind of total eclipse of the heart, by the way, not my heart, just because I'm sure people got mad about that. And they've probably gotten mad about a few things so far from both of us. But I did think it was kind of funny with them blindly fighting each other and hitting the cardboard cutout of this couple that had gotten kicked out of their own wedding earlier. Again, it's like I felt like it could have been even funnier, though. These movies never step fully into hilarity or even extreme cleverness. It's kind of restrained in a way, the tone. It just stays that way throughout, which is, I think, a strength and a weakness. It's just, this is a horror comedy, but it's never laugh out loud funny. But at least it's, like, on brand and knows its tone and sticks with that. Yeah, there is a levelness. There's never even, like, there's, like, a standout, like, laugh out loud. There's even, like, a standout, like, gross out scene or something, which is maybe something you might expect in a film like this that's going to focus on violence towards one another, doing crazy things to each other to kill them. Maybe, I don't know, did you feel like the commercial washing machine kill looks pretty gross and jump out gross kind of thing? Yeah, that got the grossest. It still probably could have put the foot on the gas a little bit more, but there's kind of a bit here where she's trying to find his cell phone, searching his person for it, and he's all goopy and melted and she's trying not to vomit. Again, I think you could have gone harder on that, but that's just not the style of these movies. Going backwards, did we already discuss the reason for the fallout with Faith and Grace? Grace moved to New York when she was 18. They were with a foster family. I think Faith really wanted her to take her with her and put her under her own guardianship. but Grace thought it would be best if she stayed with the foster family and joined her later and Faith was basically like, you have no idea how long three years feels at that age, like the three years she would have had to wait to turn 18. And at some point in that conversation she said, I still remember your last words. You said, I have to, there's no other way. Which were repeated later on. And you could kind of feel when she said it like, oh, they're going to say that again later. Yeah, yeah. Oh, no, I totally missed that. But yeah. Good call. Yeah, so that's the story. Which, I mean, it's cool to throw that into the heart of the story, that you have these sisters who've been estranged. That's not the most interesting story, though, is it? That, oh, he left when he turned 18, and I saw it three more years ago. I don't think it's the most interesting thing in the world, But when a cult of ultra-wealthy Satanists are hunting you in a complicated game in a contract with the devil, you don't need for the side story to have that much complexity. Yeah, but then in that same scenario, why do you give time to a story that isn't that unique or interesting? So much of this film was like, oh, these sisters, they have something against each other. They abandon each other and they're trying to get rid of these issues. But they're in this game where they're being hunted. So like why spend any time on like a story that's so basic? I think that you have to have some rift there between them. Like what's the cause? And I think it's less basic than you dated a guy I was in love with or some trite situation, right? Like it's not every day that you hear I moved to New York when I was 18 and left you with the foster family and you wanted to come with me. I think it has some nuance and it has themes of abandonment, which they play on multiple times throughout the movie when one of them kind of has the chance to make a break for it but comes back to save the sister and stuff. So, you know, I don't think the themes or like the motifs throughout are super rich, but they are adequate. Yeah, I think you're right. I think the main force of it is to answer that question of, okay, they're not going to leave each other in this scenario. Which, even if that wasn't the case and they didn't have this big, well, kind of basic story behind them, you still wouldn't abandon a sibling. Right. Or even it wouldn't have to be a sibling like anyone you were close to or had some kind of tie to in this type of scenario. But yeah, I guess it has its purpose. I feel like you've argued differently on episodes like Send Help when you're like, yeah, just diss the people, murder whoever you need to. Yeah, I'm not saying what I'd personally do. You wouldn't leave someone. Yeah, I'm saying I'd understand in the context of this movie, but personally I'd make some different choices. Sure. Grace goes now to leave the compound but gets called back by Titus, who is holding Faith hostage now. Grace grabs a shotgun and goes back to the lodge where she shoots and kills Francesca. Oh, I loved when Francesca had the bazooka and shot it the wrong way. Oh, yeah, she shot it the wrong way, yeah. This was funny, too, here, because Francesca comes out and pops up and is like, back for round two, bitch! And Grace is just like, yep, and shoots her with the shotgun and that's that. That was a great moment, yeah. Yeah. Now, yeah, Grace goes into the mansion. she breaks into this room where all the families were hanging out but when she gets there she gets attacked by francesca's younger brother who's now in the game he jumps out with a bunch of uzis i think and is like shooting hey i was doing the physics on this uh if you're standing and someone is running the physics yeah we see this all the time in movies right where like someone is shooting at you but you're running across the room and like their bullets like their radius of turning can't keep up with you running across the room. And just physically, that's impossible. Your turn radius standing in one place versus someone running across the room. Why do movies always do this where someone can outrun how fast you can turn across a room? Okay. All right. I'm sorry. Your physics check out. Yeah, right? Yeah. No, I agree. I was actually throwing socks at my kids. We were throwing socks at each other today. And they, you know, they were trying to dodge it. And sometimes I'd let them dodge it because they thought they were really cool. But they would, like, run the other way. And I was like, I see where you're going to end up. And that's where I throw the sock and I hit you. And that sucks. And that's a sock. If it was an Uzi, you just cover all the ground either way that this person could move and you'll hit them. Yeah. I mean, that is a trope that just makes zero sense. I mean, really, anytime someone in a movie empties hundreds of bullets and still can't hit the person, it's like, okay. But again, more similarities to Die Hard. Yeah, a lot of similarities to Die Hard, yeah. So yeah, we'll take it, I guess. That's movie stuff. So she now locks herself up in a cooler, and Titus shows up. He's got Faith at gunpoint or something, and he threatens to kill Faith if Grace doesn't come out. But Grace now agrees to come out on the condition that Titus marries Grace, which would then, as we heard before, transition the power to him without resulting in anyone else's death. So Titus agrees to this. And yeah, I was kind of bummed here. In the first film, in all the posters, you got her with a shotgun. You think it's going to be like she's on a rampage going around. And here, again, she had the shotgun for, what, two minutes, two, three minutes, kills one person, and then the shotgun's gone? Yeah, right? But I think that our expectations from the first film are now like, oh, she's not the final girl from The Hunt, that's for sure. Yeah, yeah. But she makes due. So I didn't really expect, and I didn't look at any of the marketing for this movie, really, so I didn't really expect her to be wielding a shotgun for the bulk of the film. Ah, okay. I think it makes Kills like back for round two, bitch. Yep. Like a little more satisfying because she's not just blowing people away with a shotgun the whole movie. Yeah. And like John McClane, she takes a beating. Like she's shrapnel in her arm. She's stabbed, beaten, all sorts of shit. Yeah. That's the next thing I want to talk about because now we go into like wedding mode and it's like a Love is Blind episode here where Grace, gets ready for this wedding. This team of three people come and do her up and stuff. And suddenly all those injuries that she had hours earlier, a stab through the arm, shoulder as he mentioned. Shoulder it seemed like, yeah. Yeah, strapping all around. Yeah, all that's suddenly just gone away and she's pretty okay now, I guess. Yeah. Even the sister, Faith, all that internal bleeding somehow kind of sorted itself out. I know. After she was beaten up by Titus, I'm like, there's no way she's just standing up there as a bridesmaid. Yeah. Hours later. Yeah, like in a wheelchair catatonic. Yeah. Yeah. Super surprising there. So as Grace is getting ready for this wedding, Ursula comes to talk to her and try to warn Grace of Titus' mean nature. And Ursula's trying to say, maybe the two of us can, with this power, do something good but Titus overhears this and comes in and strangles and kills his sister Ursula and in doing so he mentions that there are no rules against killing your own family members uh boy I feel like Titus you know when this movie starts and you see Ursula and Titus and like you know we're introduced to them they're killing their father and Ursula feels like she's more on top of things she even like takes the lead on killing the father a little bit and then she like it has kind of like more ideas for like how to organize the game and stuff. Titus I thought was like kind of soft from the beginning, but now I think he emerges as more of a, like don't you feel like he's kind of gone a long way? I think they kind of set it up like that though, because they show David Cronenberg's character, their father, kind of backhand Titus. And then later on, Sarah Michelle Gellar's character also does the same thing. And they kind of hang with that for a second. And I can't remember if there's like an audio sting, but it lets you know that like something kind of snapped in Titus when she slapped him. And they're kind of building him up to be like, I've been taking shit. I've been treated like a child. And other people have been like, oh, he's a psycho. So, yeah, I think it's not necessarily a surprise. Yeah, it's not a surprise. But yeah, do you feel like he's kind of cracked through this movie? Yes. Yeah, for sure. He stepped into his psychopathy. Yeah. And at some point here, Faith is protesting and it's like, you can't do this. You can't marry him. And then Grace brings back that line. I have to. There's no other way. Okay. That's a throwback to her moving to New York. Yes. This is all an allegory or metaphor. Which one would you call it? One of those? Sure. Either one, I think. Okay, cool. So then Grace goes to the basement where everyone has gathered for the wedding. The wedding proceeds, and once they are declared husband and wife, Grace grabs a knife and stabs and kills Titus, knowing now that killing family is allowed. So that's interesting because, yeah, you just mentioned she said she has to do this, right? But that was before she knew that you're allowed to kill family, right? yeah I think that she legit did it and intended to go through with it and then got that idea once Titus killed basically she did it to save her sister and I think again part of that is and the reason that their backstory does enrich the plot is because there are a few times where you can tell that Grace feels this is my chance to kind of redeem myself and my relationship with my sister. And I'm going to make a sacrifice for her benefit. Whereas before, maybe I did something selfish that was to her detriment. Yeah. Interesting, because before in the casino when Chen offers her the offer like, hey, marry my son and you guys will be okay, and she turns it down, Faith at that point is kind of upset, right? Like, hey, you gave away our chance. So you think at that point, Grace wasn't in that position to kind of be unselfish, and then this is her kind of changing her mind, like, okay, I'm going to do this to save her. Yeah, it was a different scenario just because in the latter scenario, Titus had Faith, her sister, at gunpoint. Yeah. So I think now, faced with seeing her sister being killed, she chose, fine, I'm going to go through with the wedding. Okay. Whereas before, she would have maybe had some hope that they could have gotten out of it somehow. Yeah, gotcha. Okay. So, yeah. So now she's killed Titus and has thrown him into this pit. Now with Titus dead, Grace is the holder of all the power. But rather than keep this power, she realizes there's only three minutes left till dawn. She takes off the ring, absolves her power, and throws it into a pit. all the other Satan worshippers realizing that in three minutes someone's got to be wearing this otherwise, oh sorry, not Satan but was it Labelle? Labelle. Yeah, all the Labelle worshippers realize if someone's not wearing this ring in three minutes then it's not going to be great so they all jump into the pit and they're trying to get the ring, they're killing one another as they fight for it dawn strikes and with no one wearing the ring all the bodies in the pit blow up and we just see a bunch of blood go flying everywhere. And then the movie ends with Grace and Faith leaving the property with this goat that they saved from being sacrificed. What did you think of the wedding, the twist of the kill here, and then her final moments and all the blood? Just a quick note here. Elijah Wood is standing there with this ring of power being thrown into a pit. Very similar to Lord of the Rings. Oh, good call. But I liked it, actually. I mean, you know she's going to find some way out of it, so it's no crazy surprise. But I think it's a nice touch to be like, yeah, you said thanks for telling me there's no rules against killing family. And then they toss a knife into the pit just to watch all these people kind of tear each other apart for their chance at power. And Faith, when they all jump into this pit, she's like, oh, wow, like they're really going for it. And then the mega explosion of blood. Pretty good. And Elijah was just kind of there calmly presiding over it all and kind of smiles at them. she eventually gets her cigarette and yeah they each tell each other they love each other and she says I missed you and says you're not going to have to anymore you're going to get really fucking sick of me and she says promise? I do and I kind of like that it felt like a little bit of commentary on I don't know just like mundane no drama love like yeah you're going to get sick of each other and maybe that is a luxury. And then one of the final lines was, what are you going to do with the goat? So that was a nice humorous way to exit. I thought that wrap up and the conclusion was pretty fun. What did you think? I kind of thought the third act was a little weak and anticlimactic for me. You have this big hunt going on throughout the whole movie and then it's just like a wedding which kind of dragged. And then I was thinking the whole time while she was getting married, like, oh, yeah, you could just kill this guy and you're safe. That was an easy out, I thought, for her there at the end. She healed so quickly. It almost felt like it took away a lot of the scare and tension that the movie was trying to build. Not that it did build it, but yeah. I didn't feel too scared for her in this third act, and so it made it feel like it was dragging a little bit. Well, she could have killed him, but she had to wait until they were married to make that work. Yeah. For them to actually be family members, otherwise she wouldn't have had any power. The ring wouldn't have gone to her. So it was a smart play. Even before she gets married, like when she's hanging out with Ursula, she could have just killed her then and killed – what was stopping her from killing anyone pre-wedding while she was in the bridal suite? She would have still been in the same situation, right? Like they have her sister and there's still many left of them that want to kill her. She would have had to take everyone out. And this way, all she has to take out is him. And then, yeah, she's all-powerful. yeah yeah yeah yeah you're saying yeah i guess that's a good move uh versus try to like kill everyone and go through the bloodlines i guess i didn't really mind the like lack of action for a while here there's kind of a break in the action because the second act is just pretty non-stop the whole movie so i felt like it kind of fit the structure and the tone to just have there be kind of a a chiller time here where you're kind of dealing with the emotional impact and wondering if like is this it for our hero but so i didn't mind slowing things down yeah i mean if you take out this last scene is the rest of the movie like that high octane kill like how many people does she actually kill there's a shotgun kill there's the washing machine kill there's the sword kill to the neck a few other people like explode because their ancestors failed yeah one guy gets like blown up by a propane tank that explodes but is able to get back up. Yeah. So she only killed three people then, right? Let see She actually killed well Titus the lady with the shotgun the washing machine guy the sword guy I think she killed four people if you include Titus Four people. Yeah, if you include Titus. Yeah, yeah. I guess I was looking at everything leading up to this last act. For the premise of a group of people trying to kill you, you got to survive, and the only way to survive is either you kill them and make it through the night, and really she only had to kill three ... I mean, you're counting Chen? I don't count the Chen kill because she took Chen's arm and stabbed her and then stabbed the other guy, right? And then she blew up. Yeah, right? I guess LaBelle counted it as not a kill from Grace, but for all intents and purposes, it felt like it was. Yeah. Is that like a high kill, action-packed movie? I don't know, Three People, that kind of just scratches the surface of a slasher, right? Yeah, I think it was still pretty action-packed. I mean, I'm not saying all those action sequences were executed in an extremely captivating way, but I think it kept moving, that's for sure. Even when she wasn't killing people, other people were exploding in the faces of other people or giving up the fight and driving out and crashing through the gate. There was always something going on. That's true. But maybe what we're arguing here is not was there something always going on, but how captivating were the things going on? Not always. I mean, I think it could have been executed better. Some of those scenes could have been more gripping. The back and forth with the fights could have been cooler. But at the same time, there were neat sequences, them fighting blind and stuff like that. I think everything could have been done a tiny bit better, most everything. One thing we haven't talked about much yet is Samara Weaving's performance, which I think was awesome. She kind of left it all out there. It was balls to the wall. I think that really was kind of a through line of what made the movie so entertaining for me. It's just she's like screaming at the top of her lungs. and when she kills somebody or gets the upper hand on somebody, it's very satisfying, largely just due to the intensity of her performance. Yeah, I agree. I think I would have loved more of that and a little bit more over-the-topness, not necessarily in her performance, but in the scenarios of the kills and things because, yeah, she really shines in this role and really embodies this person who's survived such a crazy ordeal and now is at it again and bringing that exhaustion to the role and just how fed up she is of the situation. I thought her and Catherine Newton played well off each other. Yeah, I thought that their chemistry as actors was better than their chemistry in the script. I did kept feeling like, oh man, I don't know why they're being so mean to each other. Even throughout the movie a couple times, you guys are dying and being utterly cruel to each other. That's not very believable. But to their credit, the performances, as actors, they bounced off each other well. And they had chemistry. Yeah. The one part where she's being mean and sending, like Grace is yelling at Faith, like, hey, you got to get out of here. You should have left from the gates. And then Faith leaves. I thought maybe Grace was doing that to protect Faith. Yeah. Sure, like Harry and the Hendersons when he's throwing shit at him, telling him to get the hell out of there. Yeah, get out of here. Yeah, but I don't think that's what it was, was it? I don't know. I think she really was truly pissed and regretted what she said. Yeah. It's possible she was kind of playing the long game there. Yeah. I think really if you guys like this movie and you haven't seen The Hunt, go see The Hunt. Because I think really that does some of what we're talking about here, where it's like the one-on-one encounters and attacks with people could have been more satisfying. She could have been more of a badass. That's what the hunt gives you. And it's a slightly different angle. You know, she's not really meant to be an utter badass. She's, in a way, the John McClane type, like, just getting by the skin of her teeth and being kind of clever and quick on her feet. She's no mega badass. Like, it's a different type of movie. Die Hard's a different type of action movie than an Arnold Schwarzenegger action movie where it's like, you know this dude's invincible. She takes the hits. Yeah, she does. I guess even your next, not to spoil that, but that person has some skills, right? Like combat skills, maybe. Sure. Or something. So yeah, you're right. I guess Samara, her character really is an everyday person. Maybe it is too much to expect some crazy over-the-top kills from her because she's kind of new to this. Yes, but I still think that doesn't mean they couldn't have executed some of those scenes even better or put some stuff in the script that made things even more captivating. For sure. The Blinded with Mace one, that was pretty cool. I think even that one could have been done a little bit better, but they could have just added a different dynamic element into some of the other confrontations as well. Yeah, I agree. I agree. I feel like none of the kills were that memorable, or there weren't those moments where you're squirming in your seats, unfortunately. And I feel like that really could have pulled this film further ahead if it had some of those. And that's where it feels a little bit watered down sometimes, or maybe as you said, level, evil, even tone throughout, where none of the moments really pop in this. And I think some of that stuff could have helped create a scene that you talk about after the movie. Yeah. Yeah, I would agree with that. I think this is an entertaining movie, but it's not amazing. It's quite entertaining sometimes. It's fun to watch. But, yeah, it's lacking a few things that just really would put it over the edge. But I still had a lot of fun with it. Yeah, yeah, I agree. It's a fun, entertaining watch. Let's see. Some questions I had. Hey, you know how they got married there at the end? So if she didn't kill that guy, would she have to play a game again because it's like the wedding night? Isn't that why she had to play in part one because they got married? And then she has to pick a card. So now in this one, she's a bride again. So she has to play another game? Yeah, that's a good question. Does every marriage in the family result in a game? Or was that just the Ladomas family situation? I'm not sure. Yeah, yeah. Okay, I'm curious. I was wondering if she just headed into Ready Not 3 and it's like maybe this time it's like Tag or something. or it's another game. It's laser tag. Oh man, I wish. That'd be awesome. You get this like 19 year old stoner explaining the rules. Yes. Bunch of kids having to wait while adults watch that. The body explosion gag. So, you know, I think the first one, the first one I like because like you really don't see that until like towards the end. And this one, it's like scattered throughout. Do you feel like it gets overused at all? You know... The answer is yes, by the way. I mean, I don't think so because that is just what happens. You know, it's more of a gag and a surprise in the first one because you don't see it happen throughout. But here, it's just inevitable. You know that that's how they die and they still use it to a decent effect every once in a while. Like when everyone in the pit explodes, it's like one at a time. And then just one giant explosion. And then the guy who kind of gave everything to his wife so he could get out of the game runs out. And he's like, I'm alive, bitches. And then he explodes. And, you know, their sisters make some comments. Like I think Faith at one point says, I'm really not used to people combusting all over me. And Grace is like, yeah, no, it's always surprising. So they do find effective ways to make it funny. But I hear what you're saying a little bit. It's kind of like a one trick pony. Yeah. Yeah. But you're right. There's some variation on it, which helps. And yeah, like the poncho that they ask for. Yeah. They play with it a little bit. But yeah, I feel like it gets a little overdone by the end. Yeah. Right. And that's kind of an effective bit too, is when all the wealthy people who are watching on the cameras know, oh, that means someone's descendant is also going to explode. So they go and try to find cover because they're sharing all in the same room. And yeah, the one kind of asshole guy hides behind the servant and asks her to refresh his drink because it got some blood in it and she's soaked in blood. Yeah, yeah. That was a fun scenario to watch. Yeah, I mean, I think they did a good job taking the premise on the first one, expanding it, bringing in new characters, new scenarios of like, yeah, watch room and like a working staff that's helping and stuff. Interesting. Do you feel like the themes of the rich, capitalism, all that stuff was heavy handed or did you like the way it was embedded in the story? I think I liked the way it was embedded in the story. I don't know that it was heavy handed but it's kind of just part and parcel with the movie. And they made their point about just how powerful they are. Cronenberg essentially calls a ceasefire single handedly. So they didn't go too far with that in other ways. They did say, like, we own the cops and stuff like that. So I don't think it was heavy handed, but it was clear, like the messaging. Yeah, I think it worked out well. Again, it's not mined in any super interesting ways. This movie just stays on a certain level and never really, like, goes for the gold or kicks you in the nuts or whatever. These guys just kind of make light and funny and forgettable movies, which is an insult, but I still really enjoy some of their stuff. But it is forgettable. Like, yeah, even the original Ready or Not, which I really enjoyed. I don't remember all that much from it. I'd say Scream 5 and 6, whether you enjoy them or not, fairly forgettable. I know not for everybody. There's some Scream franchise diehards. But Abigail, I've largely forgotten. and they're just kind of light. Yeah, I know. It's unfortunate. I feel like they've lost their edge, which I want to say back in their VHS days, maybe they had more of an edge. But yeah, these movies kind of feel for the masses in a way, and more just there for entertainment versus making anything like a bold statement or a scene or something that's going to leave you with the holy shit kind of feeling. Yeah, they aren't bold. Yeah, yep. All right. Well, anything else or do you want to jump to the rating? Let's get to the rating. All right. Zero to five ... Let's see. Zero to five ... Shit. Zero to five saved goats living in New York City. Zero to five goats saved from sacrifice living in New York City. What would you give this one? This was tough because my initial instinct was four out of five saved goats from sacrifice living in New York City. I can't remember if that was the whole scale or not. Something like that, yeah. But it is just very light, very forgettable. It could have done better. I'm sticking with a four, though. It's kind of a soft four. Ready or Not 2 continues the lighthearted, bloody humor of the first film, anchored by a committed performance from Weaving. Themes of a world controlled by the ultra-wealthy have only become more relevant in the six years since the original's release. Release, yeah. A shell of fun with a thing or two to say, but it doesn't really go much further than that. I still feel like movies like this have their place, though. Yeah. Nice. Good for you, man. That's pretty high up there. Do you remember how that compares to part one on your rating scale? Pretty much the exact same. I gave that a four as well, but it wasn't necessarily like a glowing four, if my memory serves me. Yeah. Well, yeah, I was a little bit lower than you. I came in at three goats saved from sacrifice now living in New York City. Ready or not to Here I Come is a fun overtime to the game set up in the first film, freshening up the story with new characters and a fun sister duo. But it again under delivers on the punches a film in this genre should have. And yeah, I think you're right to compare this to The Hunts. I think that's a great example of a film that when you go into a movie like this, you've got a group of people trying to kill another group of people. You're in there because you want to see some great battles, like over-the-top splatter and things that are going to gross you out and make you squirm a bit. I feel like this never got there, but entertaining and production-wise, good enough, I think. Sure, yeah. Average of 3.5, I feel like that's maybe right around where it is. Look at you using overtime. You're sticking with that basketball theme. I know, right? Almost like I know sports. Yeah. It's some things there. What do you call it in baseball when they go over time? Extra innings. Oh, really? Okay, cool. Awesome. Well, that's our review. Should we jump into some listener reviews, see how the listeners felt about this? Yeah, let's do it. I'm curious. I haven't read any of these, so this will be the first time I'm hearing them. Yeah, I think there's a good mix here. So Sheila Bear says, Ready or Not is a fresh breath of air in horror movies. It has a great mix of gore and comedic effect. Overall, a totally fun watch. Sounds like she's in your court there. Rob Humphrey says, Ready or Not is the perfect example of a movie that didn't need a sequel. It works great as a standalone film. This movie is the perfect example of why not every movie needs a sequel. It's the same thing over again, but not anywhere near as good. It really is the same thing all over again. It really is, yeah. Yeah, I know. It's kind of crazy. But that's why I'm saying we can't support. We got to be more mindful about these franchises, support the independent stuff. Yes, yeah, but not to call Rob out, but he's also a fan of the Friday the 13th franchise, which is the same thing over and over again. So I think, again, pushing back slightly on the narrative, even though the narrative isn't wrong, we've been in these eras before where we're cranking out sequels that are the same thing as the prior movie. Yeah. but not in defense of it. It's still a fair criticism. Yeah, yeah. There's definitely been a lot worse sequels. So Yvonne L. says, Instead of falling prey to sequel-itis, Ready or Not 2 is able to successfully alter the original premise enough to feel fresh without complete reinvention. The gore is turned up and the kills are fun. I question the chemistry between Sisters Grace and Fate at the beginning, but the fleshing out of their past makes them a likable pair. Solid flick with hardly a dull moment and for the love of God, someone give Grace a cigarette. So yeah, it sounds like she picked up on maybe what you were saying too at the beginning. You know, these two kind of taking a while to get there. And I know I called their backstory basic but I think it, yeah, you know, that end scene of them walking away and them coming together, I guess, it adds some weight to that, right? Yeah, I mean have you ever been abandoned by an older sibling with a foster family? Oh shit, damn, that's getting deep. I only have one older sibling. Did you grow up with a foster family? Oh, the foster family? Yeah, no, I haven't had that happen yet, but yeah, I'm sure that's a relatable thing. You're only 42, it could still happen. I know, it could have happened. Now I'm hoping I'm not getting my Robs confused. I don't think I am. I think Rob's the Friday the 13th fan I have in mind. Is this the Randy R thing again? Yes. Yeah. I think Rob is Radio Rob on Discord. Okay, cool. NGC says, nowhere near as good as the original. The sequel leans too heavily on shock value, overusing the exploding people trope in what feels like every scene instead of building real tension or substance. Yeah, I definitely felt that. Yeah. Night Season says, Ready or not 2, Here I Come is an energetic, bloody film that successfully delivers its girl power beat the rich themes the cast performs strongly and the kills are creative looking forward to watching it again i wonder if that's the the sub-genre girl power beat the rich themes do you think that's a genre of movies we're in right now sure yeah right yeah okay are we in it right now i feel like really when did ready or um your next come out was that 2011 oh yeah it It felt like a long time ago. I guess this is a 15-year thing where it's just like there's four or five movies in this little subgenre. Yeah. Ooh, folk horror? Oh, what? No. Because it's a group of people in a place. There's a lot of greenery. Also, how hard is it to hide in the woods? You know, it's just a property. There's a gate. You know, so I think it's not difficult to hide in the woods, but it's not infinite, an infinite well. You know, you can't just keep going. They're going to find you eventually. Yeah. We don't know quite how big those woods are. That's true. That's true. Yeah, I saw a bunch of hiding places, but okay. What name one of the hiding places? There's this one part where there's like a bump and like a rock and like a little bit of a branch thing that could have easily made a- All right. It's pretty foolproof. Okay, it's fun to hear these reviews. You got any more? I'll do one more. Amy Francis, ready or not to here I come, doesn't hide or seek from fun and gore, but ultimately counted too high to find its identity outside of the first film. It is all fun and games until you find a bit of boredom in your board games. Not even a Hobbit or Lisa Frankenstein could save this one. Was Lisa Frankenstein in this? Oh, man, Amy. Look at all those puns you're trying to work. I know. Those are great. Well, Catherine Newton was Lisa Frankenstein. Oh, shit. I totally forgot about that. Nice. Wow. Yeah, nice way to rope those in there. Thanks for these. I mean, these are fun. I'm glad we've started doing these. I think it just helps flesh out the ideas we're sharing, and sometimes people say what we're trying to say better than we say it or in a slightly different way. This is one I'm just like, I'm not willing to go to bat hard for it. I still feel like it's a four for me because it was fun, but all the negative things people are saying, sure, I agree with it. Yeah, yeah. I get where they're coming from. I agree, I agree. It's nice to see a lot of our thoughts reflected here, too. Yeah. Yeah. It's surprising because the popcorn meter is 90%, but I think just looking at our user reviews, it does seem like a little bit more mixed. But again, you've got to think about how Rotten Tomatoes works, right? Like if you were a user and you gave it your three out of five, which comes off feeling like a negative review in this context, that still would account as a positive that would go towards the 90%. Oh yeah, true. Right. It's very like binary like that. Yeah. Yeah. Good call. Good call. Well, yeah. Thanks everyone. Love to see those reviews. Keep them coming in. If we haven't gotten to one of yours yet, we will. And yeah, this has been a lot of fun. Anything else to add on this film? No, that's all I got. Okay. well that's gonna wrap up our episode on ready or not too here i come if you enjoy this episode please leave us a five-star rating on apple or spotify or wherever you listen to your podcast that'll help other people find their show and give us feedback if you want to support the show you can sign up for our patreon the link is on our web page for movieclub.com and again by doing so you get access to one benefit one bonus episode every month plus a bunch of our old episodes and some videos of brian and i and you get to join the discord server and which also allows you to get have your reviews uh shared with other listeners as well so check that out uh if you're looking for merch you can find links to that on our website our our uh if you want to know what episode we're going to be reviewing next week check us out on facebook or instagram and that way you can watch it before we release the episode our logo is done by amy may pop art you can find her on etsy.com and some of her cool art stuff that she's got out there and uh i think that's it so until next time if your emergency contact is someone you haven't seen for seven eight years maybe think twice about going to them when you get that call um i don't know maybe send someone else or just i mean yeah maybe if she hadn't gone she would have been okay right she would have been fine yeah yeah because yeah i mean no one even knew about her existence and they had to kind of squeeze that character into the story so yeah the lesson is don't show up for emergency contact if you haven't seen them in seven years there is an emergency with a family member do not go yeah i think if you haven't talked to emergency contact in that amount of time can they still be emergency contacts that seems like too long i mean there is no rule about the emergency contact you just write somebody down and that's that's the big contact okay like say I wrote down, like, my emergency contact is, like, Catherine Newton. Is that her name? The coach of the Michigan Wolverines. Yeah. Yeah, you could write down Catherine Newton, but you'd need her phone number. Ah, shit. Okay. Just... They're like, we'll do whatever it takes. We'll call every Catherine Newton we can find. Yeah, this is like a make-a-wish type situation here. Thank you.