Back in 2019, we got a little movie called Ready or Not. It kicked ass. The film was a damn solid action/comedy/horror blend with wickedly funny satire and a starmaking turn from Samara Weaving. Even more than Scream 5, this was the film that put Radio Silence on the map and built the foundation for everything they did later on.
And here we are seven years later, with two films built from the Ready or Not blueprint. One of them is a direct sequel and one of them is a transparent ripoff (based on the marketing and release date, anyway).
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come brings Radio Silence back behind the camera and Samara Weaving (the sole survivor of the first movie) back in the lead. The other movie is They Will Kill You, an action/horror vehicle for Zazie Beetz. The film was marketed on the involvement of the Muschietti siblings — here serving as producers — though it comes to us from director/co-writer/exec producer Kirill Sokolov, a Russian filmmaker here attempting his first real break into American cinema.
TWYK stars Beetz in the role of Asia Reaves, freshly hired as the new maid at the Virgil, a NYC apartment complex for the uber-wealthy. What Asia doesn’t know is that all the rich white residents are part of a Satanic cult. So now they have to regularly sacrifice poor people to maintain their wealth and power.
Which means we’ve got an entire mansion full of wealthy entitled assholes trying to chase down and capture our Final Girl so they can sacrifice her to Satan. Gee, doesn’t that sound familiar?!
Speaking of which, let’s check back in with Grace McCaullay (Weaving). We pick up with her immediately after the disastrous Le Domas wedding, which had unforeseen consequences. As it turns out, there are other wealthy families descended from others who sold their soul in the same satanic pact with “Mr. Le Bail”. To make a long story short — complicated by arcane and totally arbitrary rules — Grace’s survival made herself eligible to compete with the other high families for nothing less than total global domination. Naturally, the competition is another life-or-death game of Hide and Seek.
From there, it’s pretty much more of what we got in the first movie, but watered down. By contrast, it’s like TWKY and Ready or Not started out in the same place, but ended up in wildly different directions.
A huge difference is that Asia is out on parole after serving ten years for the attempted murder of her abusive father. And she spent those ten years learning how to fight. So we’re not dealing with a fresh-faced ingenue like Grace was in the first RoN or like Faith is in the sequel. Hell, even in RoN2, Grace is so freshly exhausted and traumatized by the events of the first film, she spends a lot of time whining and crying before she gets back up to speed. But not Asia — no, she’s pretty much a battle-ready badass right out of the gate.
I might add that while TWKY and RoN both deal heavily in themes of social inequality and class disparity, TWKY quite pointedly layers in themes of racial disparity by virtue of the BIPOC leading characters and the predominantly white villains. On the other hand, the villains of TWKY (the rare few that aren’t faceless stunt performers, I mean) are single-mindedly focused on the satanic rituals and world-building. In RoN and its sequel, all the Le Bail business is only ever treated as an unwelcome distraction from all the mindless creature comforts the antagonists would rather get back to. On balance, I’d say that TWKY works better in depicting the exploitation of the working class, while RoN and its sequel work better as a mockery of the wealthy and powerful who build themselves up into larger-than-life figures even though they’re just as stupid and fallible (probably even more so) than anyone else.
RoN2 has another huge lavish estate for our characters to run around in and destroy, but it doesn’t have the personality or the rich family history of the mansion in the first movie. I might further add that TWKY has a distinctly mid-century post-WWII vibe to it, living perfectly at the intersection of white upper-class superficial comfort and backwards-thinking nostalgia. Hell, both TWKY and the first RoN made heavy use of secret passageways and other architectural quirks to make the setting its own character in each respective film — no such thought or effort went into the setting of RoN2.
The Ready or Not sequel features a much deeper cast of lazy, cowardly, spoiled, entitled, puffed-up, devil-worshipping, wealthy assholes chasing down our protagonist, but none of them have the personality or the humor that we got with the Le Domas clan. The best we get is Sarah Michelle Gellar, and even she can only do so much with what little she’s given here. Unfortunately, TWKY fares even worse in this regard, as Asia plows through a parade of disposable and interchangeable stunt performers. Heather Graham and Tom Felton are the recognizable names, and they both contribute nothing. The only standout is an unrecognizable Patricia Arquette, relentlessly chewing scenery as the manager of the Virgil.
But what about the action? Sure, RoN2 offers a particularly gruesome kill with a laundry machine and an inspired fight scene between two people blinded by pepper spray. But otherwise, we don’t get nearly as much of the inventive scares and kills and fight scenes that I’ve come to expect from Radio Silence. Instead, we get people spontaneously exploding in blood. Over and over again. Yes, I know blood explosions are a Radio Silence staple, they were a defining highlight of Ready or Not and Abigail. But the trick gets old after seeing it fifty times in the same movie.
But then we’ve got what’s going on in TWKY.
See, RoN made a clear point of keeping it ambiguous as to whether the Le Baile story was mythical, how much of the Le Domas fortune is genuinely due to supernatural intervention, whether the satanic ritual is actually necessary, and what would really happen if the sacrifice isn’t done by sunrise. Obviously, all of that ambiguity is totally dissolved in the sequel, and RoN2 is significantly less interesting as a direct result. But TWKY went in another direction entirely.
See, we’re told early on and right up front that the residents of the Virgil aren’t just wealthy and powerful, they’re literally immortal. They could be maimed, dismembered, even blown to pieces and their healing factor will patch them right back up within minutes. Which means that the supernatural stakes of the plot are very, very real.
More importantly, this changes everything in terms of action. Precisely because the bad guys can’t be killed or stopped with conventional methods, our hero has to be a lot more crafty in finding other ways to take them out of commission. Which in turn means more creative stunts and fight scenes. Furthermore, because these bad guys can be repeatedly killed in every possible way, that opens the door for so many grisly scenes and gross-out gore effects like something straight out of a Sam Raimi picture.
Come to think of it, the filmmakers of TWKY seemed to pull from the same grindhouse playbook popularized by Raimi, Rodriguez, early Peter Jackson, et al. There are a lot of heavily stylized quick-zooms, camera pans, quick-cuts, speed-ramping, aggressive needle drops, etc. To say nothing of the aforementioned retro-futuristic production design, the Wes Anderson-esque diorama wide shots, and the recurring satanic pig motif. On the one hand, all of this gives the film a distinctly unique identity like we never see in RoN2 or even RoN1. On the other hand, the heightened style is so aggressively forced that it calls more attention to the filmmakers behind the camera than what’s actually going on in front of the camera.
But let’s get back to RoN2. Of all the numerous new additions to the cast, there are only two worth mentioning. The first is Elijah Wood, here playing the Lawyer appointed to serve as the representative of Mr. Le Bail himself. He’s there to serve as the referee of the game, interpreting and enforcing the various rules and bylaws that the high families are all playing by. It’s a rather important job, which makes it all the more glaring that there’s no explanation of where the nine hells he was in the last movie!
Over on TWKY, we’ve got Ray (Paterson Joseph), the apartment superintendant who betrays his fellow cultists to help Asia. Through most of the film, he’s only there to serve as an exposition device. But as the film unfolds, we get to learn more about his biracial marriage, something that would’ve been extremely dangerous for most of the Virgil’s existence. But times have changed, greater society is more accepting of mixed-race marriages, he’s seen too many good people among the “undesirables” getting sacrificed, and he doesn’t think immortality is worth the price anymore. Sure, not much is done with this angle, but it’s interesting nonetheless.
The other major addition to RoN2 is of course Kathryn Newton. She plays Faith McCaullay, the little sister who gets unwittingly roped into this new game alongside Grace. Problem: The first movie clearly stated that Grace had no family. It was a hugely fucking major point of the first movie’s story and themes that Grace had no family until she married into one.
To try and square this retcon, it’s explained that Grace and Faith fell out several years ago, back when they were both still teenagers. And they spend the entire movie talking in circles, giving each other shit about how Grace walked out and neither one ever did anything to try and reach out.
Don’t get me wrong, I love both of these actors. Weaving and Newton have both come so far in these past few years, they’re both beautiful and charismatic actors, scream queens par excellence. They’ve both delivered outstanding work with Radio Silence in the past, and I totally believe that they could play a dynamite pair of sisters. The problem is that this whole redemption angle is pathetically one-note. It’s not fun to sit through, it doesn’t advance the established family themes in any significant way, and the backstory is never developed enough to sell the flimsy retcon. It simply doesn’t work.
And the crazy thing is, TWKY outdid RoN2 in this detail as well!
At the time of Asia’s arrest, she was trying to protect her younger sister (Maria Reaves, played by Myha’la). Due to the specifics of how things played out, Maria spent the past ten years holding a grudge against the big sister who got locked up in prison when she was needed most. Worst of all, Maria eventually found her way onto the housekeeping staff at the apartment/satanic temple. And when Maria’s finally located, that’s when things really get interesting.
It makes such a huge difference that Maria isn’t some hapless bystander (like Faith is, through most of the runtime), but someone directly and personally involved in the central conflict. Moreover, because we know exactly what happened between Maria and Asia, the emotional conflict and possible redemption arc between them carries a lot more heft. It all adds up to a wild card, someone who could take either side in any given scene, with tremendous stakes and irreversible consequences if she goes either way. Hell, the first RoN had that with Grace’s ill-fated fiance — it’s a damn shame the sequel didn’t have anyone who could do the same job quite so well.
What I keep coming back to with Ready or Not 2 is the notion that more doesn’t always mean better. The filmmakers tried to cram in everything they could — bigger location, more characters, more world-building, double the leading ladies! — but it only serves to water down the original film and everything that made it great. Sure, the great stuff is still there, but there’s less of it spread more thinly, and with so much less flavor. The film isn’t great, but it’s harmless.
As for They Will Kill You, I’m honestly impressed with how a different team of filmmakers could take the same basic conceit and themes, and spin them into something so radically different. If anything, the filmmakers might’ve gone a little too far in making it different, given the oversaturation of stylistic flourishes. I might add that the film works much better as an action film than a horror, given the clear preference for huge fight scenes against waves of anonymous faceless stunt performers.
Overall, I’d say TWKY works best as an audition for Kirill Sokolov to get a bigger and better gig somewhere else. (He might as well have hand-delivered a print of this film to 87North with a note that says “CALL ME! XOXO”) Even so, it’s entertaining and unique in a way that RoN2 isn’t, and I’ll give credit for that much.
Though personally, I’d much rather rewatch the first RoN than either of these movies.