Movie Review: "Ready or Not" Is Your New 'Hide or Die' Horror Fave

A round of hide and seek with some blue bloods gets, well, bloody in the very funny horror-satire Ready or Not.

Class inequality is real, but it’s good to know families from all ends of the wealth spectrum are equally capable of taking games night way too seriously.

Anyone who has ever accidentally started a family feud during Taboo or seen a Monopoly board flipped in frustration will find something relatable in Ready or Not, even if you don’t come from the same hoity-toity background as the parlour game scions at the centre of this dastardly tale.

Australia’s own Samara Weaving stars as Grace, a young woman of modest means who came up through the foster system and is now engaged to marry Alex Le Domas (Mark O’Brien), the reluctant heir to the Le Domas gaming empire. On their wedding day, she’s excited to finally become part of his estranged family, even if she gets the feeling that Alex's 'old money' relatives think she’s a gold digger. Turns out, their nervous apprehension around their nuptials has nothing to do with Grace’s intentions. Rather, it’s due to a decades-old deal with the devil that requires any newcomers to the family agreeing to play a game on their wedding night; a game chosen at random by otherworldly forces. Sometimes it’s checkers. Sometimes it’s chess. But sometimes—and on this particular night—it’s hide and seek, in which the family must kill the interloper or find themselves dead by dawn.

Writers Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy establish the rules swiftly, and soon enough, the game is afoot, with an incredulous Grace running from her in-laws, who are now all toting rifles, shotguns, crossbows and, in the case of stern Aunt Helene (Nicky Guadagni, with a shock of slick white hair), a mighty big battleaxe. In the script’s smartest and most subversive twist, no one in the family—besides Helene—says they want to kill Grace, but, they reason, it’s really not up to them; that’s just the cost of staying wealthy, and an argument for keeping their circle as tight as possible. Even Alex convinces himself he had good intentions keeping the arrangement secret until their wedding night, because if he had told Grace, she would have left him; as if he deserves to make that call and roll the dice on her life. That, Ready or Not argues, is how the rich stay rich and get richer without sharing the wealth: not solely due to demonic intentions, or a desire to hunt weaker game (that would have been a cop out). It’s their self-deluded entitlement. In their minds, killing Grace is a cosmically-ordained right.

Of course, directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (two thirds or the Radio Silence collective, with producer Chad Villella) aren’t entirely here to deliver a Bernie Sanders stump speech. Their film is mostly an amusement park ride in which the resilient Grace tries to stay hidden, and alive, before donning sneakers, tearing off the train to her wedding gown and loading a shotgun to take out the rellies. I dug the tone they strike with cinematographer Brett Jutkiewicz; one of devious black comedy, kept on the rails by Weaving, who’s fantastically funny as the snort-laughing Grace. Her co-stars are similarly hilarious as the inept thoroughbreds, especially Melanie Scrofano, the family F-up who screams "I don’t know what I’m doing!" after a gunshot goes awry, and Kristian Bruun, as her wonderfully-named husband Fitch Bradley (he has to look up "how to" videos for his crossbow on YouTube). Adam Brody is also excellent as Grace’s caddish, unreadable new brother-in-law.

Despite heavy helpings of blood and gore, especially in the riotous finale, Ready or Not isn’t so spooky that it should scare away any 'fraidy cats this Halloween. That is, unless the post-traumatic flashbacks to ill-fated games nights of yore send you hiding under your seat. Otherwise, play on.

4/5

In Australian cinemas now. Rated MA15+ for strong horror themes and violence.

Header Image: Fox Searchlight