Not even the most seasoned of horror veterans would have had an easy time inheriting the mantle of Wes Craven’s revered “Scream” series. But with their dual attempts to revive the late legend’s genre satire, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (collectively referred to as Radio Silence) proved that, if nothing else, they were closely attuned to the sensibilities of horror cinema in the modern day. (Whether or not that’s an endorsement or an indictment of both the directors and the genre’s current state is up for debate.) Now, within a month of the “Scream” name being tainted with reminders that even its own veterans can’t tastefully evoke the late Craven, Radio Silence had returned to basics with the film that got them the “Scream” gig in the first place.
“Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come” takes place in the immediate aftermath of its predecessor, so naturally, this new entry arrives to us nearly seven years later. If Radio Silence is known for anything, it’s striking while the iron is hot, but if they’re known for anything else, it’s leaning on what makes them comfortable. So it is that, after their first post-“Scream” offering “Abigail” revealed itself as nothing more than a reverse-“Ready Or Not” (with vampires!), the film that actually inherits the name smugly saunters to the high table with little else than a more bloated ensemble reluctant to play the same game once more.
And all this is the fault of Grace (returning star Samara Weaving) for the crime of surviving the aftermath of her new in-laws’ attempts to sacrifice her on her wedding night in the name of appeasing a satanic power. (…Spoilers for the first “Ready Or Not,” I guess.) Having evaded death long enough that her captors quite literally combusted in a flurry of blood and guts, the position they occupied as devil-worshipping billionaires had been left vacant.
Grace learns precisely what that means when she’s kidnapped once again and brought before the high council (of course there’s a goddamn high council anytime someone wants some fast food world-building…), whose nameless lawyer (Elijah Wood) informs her of the next step in her survival quest: each of the remaining families on the council can now vie for the coveted HIGH high council seat! What this essentially means is they get some vague mastery over the world at large—it’s never clarified beyond general “rule the world” implications, so just imagine the United States’s veto power that renders the UN virtually worthless, but on a micro scale.
Also Check: The 50 Best Films Of 2019
All any of the families need to do to gain that ultimate power is—you guessed it!—kill Grace before dawn. To give her incentive to participate in this proto-game hunt on this vacant compound, the council goes ahead and tosses Grace’s estranged younger sister Faith (Kathryn Newton) as a potential casualty to spice things up.
Unfortunately, “spice things up” is just about the only thing in the directors’ typically self-satisfied, blood-drenched comedy that “Here I Come” fails to do. With regards to their eclectic casting—not necessarily “inspired” in the choices of past collaborators like Newton and Kevin Durand, but at least Sarah Michelle Gellar gets a nice payday—Radio Silence seems to double down on subverting any excitement that might come from their energetic new faces by cutting all the interesting prospects down to the barest of screen time.
Anyone excited to see David Cronenberg in front of the camera (can’t say I was among you, but I sympathize) will have to settle for an unceremonious exit within the first 10 minutes. But fret not, for “Here I Come” will compensate with exactly one (1) creative sequence involving a pepper spray gag. Otherwise, you may be forced to settle for the same sterile sanguine spurts that pass for gore with Radio Silence, as each over-produced body tackle and routine shoulder stab is just one step closer to another cheap quip that serves as the only real evidence that this is likely supposed to take place circa 2019.
“Here I Come” does make its cursory attempts to legitimize the stakes by fleshing out (pun partially intended?) the tumultuous sisterly dynamic between Weaving and Newton. Abandonment issues run aplenty, but the film proves too limp in its desire to balance the genuine resentment at the heart of Faith’s standoffishness with its more pressing “blood runs thicker than water” survivalist mode. In a film replete with shallow familial connections, the one intended to withstand the chaffing of the handcuffs proves just as willing to slip through the nearest opening and disappear at the earliest opportunity.
During the film’s requisite rule-dump scene, Wood’s lawyer describes Grace’s circumstances in relation to her previous misadventure as “double or nothing.” In praxis, “Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come” can more readily be described as a case of “double AND nothing”—which is to say, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett are more than happy to offer double the players, but are just as ready to provide nothing of substance for them to contribute when assembled for a new round of facile ‘Eat the Rich’ cosplay.
