Related Article: Samara Weaving and More Talk Sequel ‘Ready or Not 2: Here I Come’

Initial Thoughts

(L to R) Sarah Michelle Gellar and Shawn Hatosy in ‘Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come’. Photo by Searchlight Pictures/Pief Weyman, Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2026 Searchlight Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

‘Ready or Not’ was a breath of fresh air when it came out in 2019: directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (‘Scream’ and ‘Scream VI’), screenwriters Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy, and star Samara Weaving delivered a smart, subversive, often wickedly funny and unapologetically gory horror comedy that poked fun at wealth and marriage.

‘Ready or Not 2: Here I Come’ reunites the same team and adds some more ingredients, including a new cast and an expanded in-movie mythology, occasionally yielding the same results. The movie is fun, although it takes a long time to get going and a lot of what worked the first time already seems familiar now.

Story and Direction

(L to R) Samara Weaving and Kathryn Newton in ‘Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come’. Photo by Searchlight Pictures/Pief Weyman, Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2026 Searchlight Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

The new film literally opens as the first one ends, with a bloodied Grace Le Domas (Weaving) stumbling out of her in-laws’ burning estate, having survived a brutal game on her wedding day in which her new family must sacrifice her to a demon or face ruination and death. Grace (who immediately starts using her maiden name of MacCaullay again) is whisked to the hospital, where she’s met by her estranged sister Faith (Kathryn Newton), who was called as her emergency contact.

Before the siblings can barely start airing grievances, however, they’re attacked (in a too-brief appearance from Kevin Durand); it turns out that the Le Domas family were part of a council of wealthy, powerful families who secretly rule the world thanks to their worship of Satan, and now that one of the families has been wiped out, the others have one night to kill Grace lest the same misfortune befall them. This time, however, Faith is caught up in the hunt, and the two sisters must face a violent onslaught by not one but four families, including the all-powerful Danforth clan.

(L to R) Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett on the set of ‘Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come’. Photo by Searchlight Pictures/Pief Weyman, Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2026 Searchlight Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

‘Ready or Not 2’ gets off to a creaky start: the entire first act is almost all exposition, as first Grace explains the plot of the first film to Faith, and then a smug, subtly amused Elijah Wood – as the council’s unnamed lawyer – lays down the complicated rules of the new game once Grace and Faith are captured (those rules, by the way, are bent or disregarded more than once as we go along). All that throat-clearing takes a long time and slows the pace to a crawl, only punctuated by the first attack on the sisters in the hospital.

Once the game’s afoot, the action picks up again and the first kill (death by industrial washing machine) is morbidly hilarious, thanks to Weaving and Newton’s reactions. Most of the would-be killers this time are barely sketched in as characters – save for the sinister brother-sister act of the Danforths, played by Shawn Hatosy (‘The Pitt’) and ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ icon Sarah Michelle Gellar – which is a bit of a letdown from the first film: the dynamic there, as the Le Domas clan picked at each other while hunting Grace, offered a scathing critique of family that is missing from the new story.

(L to R): Kara Wooten, Shawn Hatosy, David Cronenberg, and Sarah Michelle Gellar in ‘Ready or Not 2: Here I Come.’ Photo: Searchlight Pictures/Pief Weyman, Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2025 Searchlight Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

In one funny/not funny early sequence, the Danforth patriarch, played by legendary director David Cronenberg, picks up a bedside phone and mutters ‘Approve the ceasefire,’ while watching footage of a war zone on his TV. No sooner does he hang up then a ‘Breaking News’ banner announces the ceasefire. The idea that a small coterie of very rich, well-connected oligarchs runs the world – a sort of cross between the Illuminati and the High Table of the ‘John Wick’ films – is a prescient and all too timely one, but ‘Ready or Not 2’ more or less pays it lip service and moves on.

The film really shines brightest and comes fully alive when the MacCaullay sisters fight, claw, shoot, and kick their way through the vast new labyrinth of a Danforth-owned resort, although it begins to feel repetitive down the stretch. A more acidic layer of social critique is largely absent this time amidst all the hardcore violence and gore. Two movies in, ‘Ready or Not’ is still entertaining but has lost that fresh feeling.

Cast and Performances

(L to R) Nestor Carbonell, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shawn Hatosy, Elijah Wood, and Nadeem Umar-Khitab in ‘Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come’. Photo by Searchlight Pictures/Pief Weyman, Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2026 Searchlight Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

Although their relationship follows a shopworn narrative arc (the sisters greet each other coldly, fight, make up, fight, make up again, become besties), Weaving and Newton (‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’) make a great team and their interactions do keep ‘Ready or Not 2’ appealing. Weaving’s huge eyes and expressive features only emphasize her star presence, while Newton has undeniable charisma with a jaded undercurrent. Their chemistry makes the siblings’ relationship organic and well-earned.

Gellar and Hatosy make a solid brother-sister act as well, the former working a few extra layers into her character and the latter proving effective as a truly vicious, misogynistic psychopath (with all the money and power in the world at his fingertips). It’s great to see Cronenberg in his extended cameo, and the best of the supporting cast is the ever-efficient lawyer played by Elijah Wood, who’s clearly having himself a grand old time and wants to share it with us.

Final Thoughts

Elijah Wood in ‘Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come’. Photo by Searchlight Pictures/Pief Weyman, Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2026 Searchlight Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

Directors Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett have their strengths, including an eye for detail and a dark sense of humor, as well as their weaknesses, such as a tendency to edit their fight scenes a little too choppily. Their use of already tired tropes (such as scoring a violent confrontation with an incongruous pop ballad) is matched by their ability to concoct macabre but highly funny set pieces and some outrageous moments of gore.

But while ‘Ready or Not 2’ is moderately entertaining (especially in its second half), this sequel doesn’t sizzle like its predecessor despite doubling down on its protagonists, its world-building, and its undeniably hateful (and rich) villains. If the box office gross leads to a third film, the rules of the game may have to be changed before we’re ready (or not) to return.

‘Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come’ receives a score of 70 out of 100.

(L to R): Kathryn Newton and Samara Weaving in ‘Ready or Not 2: Here I
Come.’ Photo: Searchlight Pictures/Pief Weyman, Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2025 Searchlight Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

What is the plot of ‘Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come’?

After surviving a brutal ‘game’ that resulted in the deaths of her husband and in-laws, Grace MacCaullay learns that the wealthiest and most influential families on Earth have to kill her in a new game or risk losing their power and fortunes. Grace refuses to participate at first – until her younger sister, Faith, is also marked for death.

Who is in the cast of ‘Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come’?

• Samara Weaving as Grace MacCaullay
• Kathryn Newton as Faith MacCaullay
• Sarah Michelle Gellar as Ursula Danforth
• Shawn Hatosy as Titus Danforth
• David Cronenberg as Chester Danforth
• Elijah Wood as the Lawyer
• Néstor Carbonell as Ignacio El Caido
• Kevin Durand as Bill Wilkinson
• Olivia Cheng as Wan Chen Xing
• Varun Saranga as Madhu Rajan
• Nadeem Umar-Khitab as Viraj Rajan
• Juan Pablo Romero as Felipe El Caido
• Masa Lizdek as Martina Rajan
• Maia Jae as Francesca El Caido
• Daniel Beirne as Kip Danforth
• Antony Hall as Wan Cheng Fu

‘Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come’ opens in theaters on March 20th.

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