Chances Are You’ll Like It, Whether You’re Ready or Not

Ready or Not is a fun thriller starring the up-and-coming Samara Weaving (The Baby Sitter), and directed by the up-and-coming filmmakers, the duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillet of the trio of filmmakers known as Radio Silence (V/H/S, Devil’s Due and Southbound). With a whip-smart script by Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy, in a single location, Ready or Not is silly smart and clever enough to make an enjoyable ride. The movie opens with two young boys witnessing the horrific killing of their uncle on the night of his wedding to the boys aunt. From this brief ritualistic killing the movie jumps to thirty years later, where the prodigal son has returned for his own wedding night games.

Samara Weaving plays Grace, a woman who has married into a very wealthy family. At the urging of Grace, her husband Alex (Mark O’Brien of City on a Hill) reluctantly agrees to return home. He has been estranged from his family for some years and reluctant to tell Grace why, but Grace, as it turns out is an orphan and longs for the connection of a real family and be a part of family traditions. Grace soon discovers that some traditions are best left alone.

Tony Le Domas (Henry Czerny), the family’s patriarch and his heirs to the family fortune, including Andie McDowell as Tony’s wife, all explain to Grace the tradition of playing a game on one of the family members wedding night. Various members of the family each tell her about the game they played on their wedding night and all of these games were innocuous games such as Old Maid and checkers and such games. It all may seem a little silly to Grace, and Alex has shown his dislike of the tradition, but Grace agrees to draw a card from a suspiciously occult looking box to decide what game will be played this particular wedding night.

Grace draws a card of hide and seek. The only rule she is given in order to win is to not be found before dawn. And so, Grace goes unknowingly into this odd family’s version of the greatest game ever played; so unknowing she has been selected as prey. This stipulation of not being found before dawn plays into some exposition explained to Grace, that the family fortune was given to them upon this condition of maintaining this wedding night ritual. Naturally, this doesn’t look suspicious to Grace at all as she finds a dumbwaiter to hide in.

Adam Brody as the alcoholic brother Daniel is one of the more satisfying performances of this movie, and he is of course, the other brother who as a young boy witnessed the horrific murder of their aunt’s husband’s brutal murder by the rest of the family. He in fact warns both Grace and Alex to leave, but she will have none of that. Later Alex attempts to enlist Daniel to help save Grace, and here is where Brody shines with his genuine sympathy for what is about to happen, his genuine disgust, and yet his fatalistic attitude that there is nothing more that can be done about it.

The family chooses their weapons to hunt down the unwitting bride and kill her. Once Grace becomes aware of the game she’s found herself trapped in the fun begins. Ready or Not relies upon familiar tropes and, of course, one of the most familiar is the notion that rich people get rich by evil means and are generally buffoonish people with their classist noses in the air. In this scenario, Grace clearly represents the middle class struggling to survive in a rigged game that favors the rich.

As an economic theory this trope is woefully naive in it’s child like bias. As a horror/thriller tale of human prey being hunted by human predators the trope works just fine and makes the game of hide and seek all the more fun. Weaving seems to be an actress to keep an eye on and she gamely sells this silly premise, as do the rest of cast and the duo of Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillet are also directors that seem full of promise