Ready or Not (Movie Review)

PLOT: A young bride (Samara Weaving) marries into a wealthy family that made their fortune through games. Before she can be accepted as one of them, she’s forced to choose one at random for her initiation, only to pick the one dreaded game, ‘hide and seek”, that ends with her being hunted by her heavily armed in-laws, who must kill her before dawn as part of a satanic pact agreed upon years ago by their ancestors.

REVIEW: READY OR NOT is atypical fare for Fox Searchlight. Mostly known for their prestige indies, this looks like it might have once been intended as a trial run for a sideline into elevated horror, similar to what’s happening at A24, although a slate of these movies seems unlikely in the aftermath of the Fox-Disney merger.

It’s too bad, because if READY OR NOT was the type of horror fare they would have concentrated on, we may be missing out on some great films, with this the freshest horror-comedy I’ve seen in years. Wickedly funny, but packed with buckets of gore that will please even the hardest core horror fan, this should put filmmaking collective Radio Silence on the map in a big way, while star Samara Weaving seems like a star just waiting to happen.

The premise is an interesting take of the old MOST DANGEROUS GAME premise mixed-in with a little Agatha Christie and sprinkled with one-percenter satire. Weaving’s character is marrying into money, but not for the cynical desire to be rich. Rather, this product of the foster care system yearns for a family to call her own, making the mistake of bringing her new hubby, Mark O’Brien’s Alex, back into the family fold. Patriarch Henry Czerny is your typical blue blood, while prodigal son Adam Brody is an alcoholic with a gold-digging wife, while his sister, “Wynonna Earp”’s Melanie Scrofano is a coked-up mess with a lazy, neer-do-well hubby (Kristian Bruun). Worst of all is their demonic-looking aunt (Nicky Guadagni) with only her mother-in-law (Andie MacDowell) seeming to be relatively sane.

Once the hunt starts, the movie is driven forward by the engine that, should Weaving’s Grace survive, all their lives will be forfeit, but whether or not they're actually is a satanic pact or not is left ambiguous for most of the film, with it perfectly plausible that these rich folks might just be out of their minds. The movie propels itself from one set-piece to another, with much comic mileage gotten out of the expendable “help” while Weaving’s white wedding dress gets more and more stained with gore as the film goes on.

The only audience that might be turned off of READY OR NOT will be horror fans that prefer a meat and potatoes approach. The goal here obviously to make this as much of a comedy as it is horror, although the gore level is off-the-chain in the kind of hard-R way that the audience at Montreal ‘sFantasia Fest, where this had its world premiere, demands. Weaving is very likeable as the heroine, with it similar to the part she played in the underrated MAYHEM, while “Halt & Catch Fire’s” Mark O’Brian is nicely nuanced as the new husband torn between his wife and self-preservation. The scene-stealer, though, has to be Adam Brody who has his best role since “The O.C” as the dissolute, screw-up son, who’s not too into the idea of hunting and killing this perfectly decent seeming young woman.

Radio Silence (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett) have also gone the extra mile by giving this an eerie, candlelit look that makes it feel like a lost Universal Horror thriller, while the score by Brian Tyler is memorably eccentric. Overall, this is a real late summer treat for horror fans, and one that seems destined for a serious cult following in the years to come.