We went into Ready or Not 2 with cautious optimism. The first film is genuinely one of those rare horror-comedies that pulls off every single thing it tries to do. It is contained, mean, funny, and completely unhinged in the best possible way. So a sequel? That is always a gamble.
Meaghan admits it outright: “I was like, oh, I don’t know. What if it just… takes away from it?” And yet, here we are, completely and happily wrong.
Ready or Not 2 picks up in the aftermath of the first film’s chaos. Grace MacCaullay, now Grace MacCaullay LaDomas (she did technically get married before everything went sideways), is back, and this time she has company. Her sister Faith, played by Katherine Newton, is pulled into the madness alongside her.
The setup is simple on paper: four rival families are competing for control of a satanic throne of power, and killing Grace is the golden ticket. Survive the night again, and she wins. But as Meaghan puts it, “as you get into it, there are more layers, and there’s more to it than that.”
The Cult, the Rules, and Mr. LaBelle
One of the most interesting things about this sequel is how aggressively it expands the mythology. The first film gave us one family, one night, one deal with a demon named Mr. Le Bail. This one opens that whole thing up.
Now we understand that there are multiple families worldwide who have made similar pacts, all funneling power up to whoever sits at the head of the table. Because Grace survived her wedding night, she threw the whole system out of balance. The seat is now up for grabs.
The rules matter here in a way that actually affects the story. Each family can only use weapons that existed at the time their original ancestor made the deal. So you end up with a completely chaotic mix of old pistols, scimitars, hammers that look like pickaxes, and at the modern end of things, a drone (which technically was not used as a weapon, so maybe it does not count) and a sniper rifle.
Arthur points out that the family from Spain has the most contemporary-looking arsenal, while the Danforth siblings are working with weapons that look like they belong in a museum. “Ursula has a very old pistol. And Titus, I have no idea what the fuck that thing was.“
And those rules have real consequences. When one character (played by a briefly-seen Kevin Durant) decides to skip the formalities and just go kill Grace at the hospital, he immediately explodes. The game has not officially started. You cannot just go rogue.
The movie takes its absurd internal logic seriously, and that is exactly why it works. There are loopholes, too, which Grace finds and exploits. “She finds loopholes,” Arthur says. “And they have to follow the rule. And it actually works.” That added a dynamic that made the story feel more like a chess game than a slasher, which is a trick the first film pulled off, too, but this one does it on a bigger stage.
The Cast is the Secret Weapon
We have said it before about certain films, and we will say it again here: a great ensemble can carry almost anything. Ready or Not 2 has a genuinely great ensemble. Samara Weaving reprises her role as Grace, and she remains as watchable as ever. Meaghan puts it simply: “She could sit around in a potato sack, and she’d be interesting to watch.”
Katherine Newton’s Faith is the real addition, though. The chemistry between the two leads is the emotional backbone of the film. They play sisters who have grown distant, carrying real feelings of betrayal and estrangement into the middle of a life-or-death situation. That is a lot to ask of two characters in an action horror movie, and it works. Meaghan found the whole thing:
Multifaceted for a film that you wouldn’t necessarily expect to find that in.
Then there are the villains. Sarah Michelle Gellar and Shawn Hatosy play Ursula and Titus Danforth, twins, and they are both outstanding. Gellar does something that not every actor can pull off: she acts with her face. When her brother starts to go completely off the rails, you can see Ursula’s reaction shift in real time without a single line of dialogue.
Meaghan clocked it: “The way that she looks at him changed, and I saw that. It was so good.” And Shawn Hatosy as Titus is, to put it plainly, terrifying. He starts the film looking a little pathetic. By the end, he is the scariest thing in the movie. “Once he realizes that he’s been given the freedom to do what he actually wants to do, he’s a psychopath.”
Elijah Wood plays a character known only as the Lawyer, essentially the game’s neutral overseer. He watches everything with this quiet, amused energy that is just delightful. “He’s like side funny,” Arthur says. “He’s just kind of watching and observing and smirking at stuff.” The moment he appears, about ten to fifteen minutes in, is reportedly when Meaghan went from unsure to completely locked in.
Blood, Kills, and Creative Chaos
If you watched the first Ready or Not, you know what you are signing up for. People explode. Things get very messy. This film takes that and cranks it up to a level that is almost cartoonish in the best way. The running gag that had us both losing it is simple: Grace and Faith keep getting completely drenched in blood whenever someone near them meets their end, manage to clean up a little, and then it immediately happens again. “They’re standing there and they’re like… for fuck’s sake, man. Again? I was clean five minutes ago.”
Beyond the expected gore, the film actually puts real effort into making each death feel different. Nobody is dying the same way twice. The first film had its moments of creativity (the maids, in particular, had some standout exits), but this one does it across the whole cast. One kill involving a cycling machine early in the film genuinely surprised us both. Arthur describes it as: “Oh my god. That was good.”
The comedy beats land just as well as the horror ones, and sometimes those things are happening simultaneously. Ignacio, the Spanish family patriarch played by Nestor Carbonell, has a modern sniper rifle and is somehow the worst shot imaginable. His associate shows up with a rocket launcher and fires it backwards.
It is the kind of absurdism that should not work but absolutely does, because the movie has already built up enough trust in its own weird world that you just go with it.
The Setting Does the Heavy Lifting
One thing we both appreciated was how thoughtfully the location is used. The first film was set entirely within one large house, Casa Loma in Toronto (this film was also shot in Toronto, which explains David Cronenberg’s very fun cameo). It was big and atmospheric but ultimately contained.
Ready or Not 2 takes place at the Danforth Resort, a massive hotel complex that gives the story room to breathe and sprawl. Ballrooms, basements, kitchens, a bar, grounds, and outdoor spaces. Each of these areas gets used for something. It is not just set dressing.
Meaghan puts it well:
The setting matched the expansion of the universe in the second film. I thought it tied together really nicely. It was smart how it was done.
The physical space mirrors the story’s scale. As the mythology grows, so does the arena. That kind of deliberate design choice is easy to overlook but impossible not to feel.
Final Scores and What to Expect
The context for this sequel is worth knowing: directors Matt Olpin and Tyler Gillett were originally developing an entirely separate film centered on a sister story, planned to star Katherine Newton and Samara Weaving.
Searchlight Pictures approached them about a direct Ready or Not sequel, and the two filmmakers proposed folding that sister story into the existing universe. The studio said yes. That origin explains a lot. The sister dynamic at the center of this film is not there just because it made sense as a sequel. It was a story these filmmakers genuinely wanted to tell.
Arthur scored it a 7.5. Meaghan went higher, landing at 8.5. They met in the middle at an 8. We think that is fair. The film takes a minute to find its footing, and if you went in cold without seeing the first one, you would probably feel a little lost. But once it clicks, it really clicks.
The trailer, by some miracle, does not spoil everything. “The trailer oddly enough does not give you the entire story,” Meaghan points out. “Sometimes they’re like, yeah. Here’s a two minute trailer of the whole fucking movie.” Not this one.
If you are looking for a horror movie to watch this weekend, this is the one! Pay attention to the sibling dynamics, both pairs of them. And try not to be too disappointed by the extremely brief Kevin Durant cameo. We certainly were.