Three stars. Rated R, for violence, gore, drug use, relentless profanity and buckets o' blood
By Derrick Bang
Fans of dark-dark-dark humor — who can work up a macabre chuckle amidst gore, gouts of blood and the occasional decapitation — are guaranteed to have a great time with this little chiller.
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| Concealed — and as yet undetected — behind a bed, Grace (Samara Weaving) has just discovered the lethal details of the "game" her new husband Alex (Mark O'Brien) insisted that she join. |
The timid and squeamish — which is to say, everybody else — are advised to steer veryclear.
Ready or Not comes from the gleefully demented minds of a filmmaking trio collectively known as Radio Silence: co-directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillet, and executive producer Chad Villella. Their previous big-screen efforts haven’t made much noise — V/H/S, Devil’s Due and Southbound are best left forgotten — but this one likely will elevate their cred.
As well it should. Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillet have made the most of a sharply honed script by Guy Busick and Ryan Murphy, which develops a simple premise into an exciting, 95-minute thrill ride. The execution may be gruesome, but there’s no denying the edge-of-the-seat suspense.
That “simple premise” will look familiar to those with fond memories of 2017’s Get Out, because the opening act is pretty much identical, albeit with a gender reversal: young adult brings lover home to “meet the folks,” whereupon the unsuspecting newcomer discovers all manner of dangerous weirdness within the massive mansion walls.
Mind you, Ready or Not doesn’t have anywhere near the ingenious social subtext that brought Get Out’s Jordan Peele a well-deserved Academy Award for original screenplay … unless, perhaps, Busick and Murphy intend a satiric shot at the notion that the obscenely wealthy really arehopelessly out of touch. But that’s probably giving them too much credit.
At best, Ready or Not is a guilty pleasure, and an unapologetic tip of the hat to the cheerfully grotesque excesses of France’s infamous Grand Guignol stage productions, with a literary nod toward Marlowe and Goethe.
We open on a wedding day, with humble Grace (Samara Weaving) brought by fiancé Alex (Mark O’Brien) to the immense estate owned by the parents from whom he has been estranged for many years. We initially wonder why he’d bother, given that so many of the arriving clan members seem related to the Addams Family, but — as Busick and Murphy carefully establish — everything happens for a reason.
Grace is beyond nervous, and Weaving deftly handles her character’s fluttery, fish-out-of-water anxiety. The Le Domas wealth goes back generations, having been founded on an extremely successful line of board games, subsequently parlayed into sports franchises and all manner of income-generation endeavors. Alex’s parents — Tony (Henry Czerny) and Becky (Andie MacDowell) — seem welcoming enough, even if the former’s efforts at conversation are stiffly, needlessly formal. But Becky is genuinely warm, and MacDowell makes her sincere; she confesses to also having been an outsider, back in the day.
On the other hand, Alex and Grace’s outdoor wedding tableau is framed by cinematographer Brett Jutkiewicz for maximum malevolent humor, thanks to the front-row seat occupied by Alex’s scowling Aunt Helene (Nicky Guadagni). Class, can we spell c-r-e-e-p-y?
Other family members are an odd bunch. Alex’s alcoholic brother Daniel (Adam Brody) seems nice enough, but his haunted, sad-puppy demeanor suggests secrets he can’t bear to confront. His wife Charity (Elyse Levesque) is a chill, calculating bitch whose frozen, hostile stare could transform the unwary into a block of ice.
Alex and Daniel’s sister Emilie (Melanie Scrofano) is an over-eager under-achiever who compensates for constant screw-ups with liberal doses of cocaine. She’s the most deliberately overstated character, and therefore — eventually — the instigator of the most gruesome stabs at humor.
Her arrogant husband Fitch (Kristian Bruun) is a former frat boy who likely enjoyed torturing plebes, back in the day, but now is way past his prime. He and Emilie have two young sons, both obnoxious and unrestrained little brats. (No surprise.)
The weird overall dynamic notwithstanding, the wedding ceremony goes off without a hitch, but Grace’s hope for a night of connubial bliss is derailed by the revelation of a “family tradition”: Newcomers are expected to gather in the opulent music room to play a game at the stroke of midnight.
What game? Grace asks, puzzled but wanting to appear amenable. Well, others reply, in the past it has been checkers, or chess, or Go Fish. The choice is determined by pulling a random card from a spooky old box.
What nobody tells Grace — not even her new husband, tensely worried in an adjacent chair — is that she’s about to engage in the equivalent of Russian Roulette. In place of a bullet, she draws the card marked “Hide and Seek.”
Everybody sighs; Alex goes several shades whiter.
“You hide, and we’ll count to 100,” Tony explains, with mock cheerfulness and exaggerated cordiality. “If we don’t find you by dawn, you win.”
Grace — armed with Weaving’s best mischievous gaze — hopes aloud that it doesn’t take that long.
Unfortunate choice of words.
Once Grace is out of sight, the family members pull traditional weapons from their display hooks: rifles, a pistol, a crossbow and (ahem) spear gun and battle axe. The latter, naturally, is wielded by Aunt Helene.
At barely half an hour into the film, we wonder: How can one young woman, still hampered by her wedding dress, hope to stay alive against such odds? More to the point, how can Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillet maintain tension for another hour? And what the hell is going on, and why is Alex putting up with it?
Have faith.
The subsequent mayhem is well paced and leavened with plenty of gallows humor: most frequently because poor Emilie has a distressing habit of killing the wrong people. As mentioned above, either you find this funny — as was the case with most of Monday evening’s preview audience — or you’re in the wrong theater. (Near as I could tell, nobody fled.)
Grace soon morphs into a spirited, resourceful heroine, and Weaving handles the necessary transformation quite credibly. At first, as realization dawns, Grace is a sobbing sparrow who looks like she’s about to expire from sheer terror; our hearts go out to her, despite this film’s dog-nuts setting. It’s therefore quite satisfying when Grace’s survival instincts kick into gear, amid the rapidly escalating carnage.
O’Brien similarly navigates a difficult role, given that Alex is driven by conflicting emotions. On the one — most obvious — hand, Alex clearly adores Grace; the devotion is evident in O’Brien’s protective posture. But some sort of underlying conflict is evident; although the contempt for his parents is genuine, Alex nonetheless responded to some sort of “pull” that brought them back to the Le Domas estate.
O’Brien excels at looking worried (and he gets a lot of practice here).
Scrofano and Bruun initially handle the comic relief, but Czerny soon overtakes them, when Tony becomes more and more deranged over the notion that one little slip of a girl is giving them so much trouble. Becky becomes the voice of calm authority, and make no mistake; she and Charity are the ones to watch out for. Along with brutally practical Aunt Helene (and my, Guadagni has fun slicing up the scenery).
John Ralston is quietly memorable as the urbane Stevens, the Le Domas head butler. Hanneke Talbot, Celine Tsai and Daniela Barbosa fill out the house staff as maids and nannies.
Andrew M. Stearn’s production design is terrific, given all the foreboding rooms, outbuildings and secret passages that dot the mansion and estate; Jutkiewicz lights his tableaus for maximum ookie-spookie unease.
Bettinelli-Olpin, Gillet and editor Terel Gibson aren’t too proud to rely on in-our-face jump cuts, and costume designer Avery Plewes obviously got a kick out of gradually transforming Weaving into the ultimate blood-spattered bride.
Ultimately, Ready or Not can be regarded as a cheeky, carnage-laden shaggy dog story, which (perhaps) exists solely for the delivery of the film’s final line: as hilariously perfect a dénouement as one could wish for.
Allowing, of course, for the unrelenting tastelessness along the way.
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