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| Samara Weaving in Ready or Not. Image courtesy Fox Searchlight. |
Cruelty
is the joke that makes Ready
or Not's nasty
heart beat. The film's purpose is to inflict as much pain as possible
via grotesque slapstick while layering the endeavor with an ample
amount of gallows humor. Ready
or Not
is just clever enough to pull off a pretty basic story while ramping
up the insanity more and more until a gloriously bloody conclusion.
Ready
or Not
stars Samara Weaving Grace, a newlywed adjusting to the immense
wealth she has married into. Her husband Alex Le Domas' (Mark
O'Brien) family – father Tony (Henry Czerny), drunken brother
Daniel (Adam Brody), sister Emilie (Melanie Scrofano), mother Becky
(Andie MacDowell), and Aunt Helene (Nicky Guadagni) – has an odd
tradition in which the newest member has to play a random game on
their wedding night. Grace draws Hide and Seek, which ends up being a
rather dangerous game. As Grace navigates through an unfamiliar
mansion hiding, her new family members clumsily hunt her down to save
their own lives from a potential family curse.
Ready
or Not
is a vicious movie, devilish in a delightfully entertaining fashion.
It's cringe-worthy and gross, lingering on shots to build the
anticipation that something wicked is about to happen. The filmmakers
like to turn the screw tighter and tighter, setting up little things
broadly yet leaving just enough doubt for the audience to pretend
there is no way the movie would possibly go that far. But Ready
or Not does,
and then it goes just a little further because restraint is for the
unimaginative. The target, with one notable exception, is the Le
Domas family and its associates, who are designed as caricatures of
the unfathomably wealthy and privileged. If the film is cruel, it's
cruel mostly to the idea of a level of wealth that effectively saps
the humanity out of its hosts.
But
then there's Grace, who is put through all hell sorts of hell. She's
physically battered by a collection of idiots and emotionally wrecked
by rejection of the only thing she's ever wanted in life. Ready
or Not
paints her suffering as a purification from naivete and
dehumanization of the soul; the sweetness she exhibits in the
beginning is replaced with rage and vindictiveness. Weaving, who is
pretty brilliant in this movie, shows this change through a little
snort toward the beginning and toward the end of the film – what
starts as innocent turns cruel as the night continues and her
vengeance roars out. Her survival is rooted in hatred, which is an
odd thing to root for in a character. Kindness is an odd weakness for
a movie to exploit, perhaps a little too cruel for a movie in which
the hate is otherwise directed at rich ghouls.
This
is also a bit of a downside to the script. Ready
or Not
has a difficult time knowing when to show and when to tell, sometimes
being a little too blunt with the message or opening with a moment
that kills the twist prematurely. The logic for opening 30 years
prior is sound: The additional history establishes character
motivations for Daniel, Helene, and Alex to a degree while tossing in
a nifty '80s joke. The surprise though is a little more valuable than
the character points, which are set up rather well in other parts of
the film, and the joke is not good enough trade for suspense. Ready
or Not
would be more interesting had it kept the audience on the same page
as Grace in lieu of the quick prologue.
That
is a pretty minor nit to pick for a movie as funny and ridiculous as
Ready
or Not.
Aside from a lack of narrative subtlety, the script itself has a
bounty of clever jokes and macabre sight and sound gags that run
right through a marvelously bloody end. Directors Mark
Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett keep a pretty excellent tempo and
maintain a near perfect blend of comedy to suspense, using the
inherent silliness of the premise to create some chills. The movie is
about the lengths people will go to survive, and whether or not those
lengths are worth surviving for, which is unnerving to say the least.
The film's tone is humorous, but the content is mildly terrifying
because of how easy it is to be heartless and cruel if one's survival
is on the line.
Review: Four out of Five Stars
Click here to see the trailer.
Rating: R
Run time: 95 minutes
Genre: Thriller
tl;dr
What
Worked: Samara
Weaving, Sense Of Humor, Tone
What
Fell Short: A
Little Too Much Exposition
What
To Watch As Well:
House
of the Devil, You're Next
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