Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (dirs. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett)
Certificate: 15
Running Time: 108 mins
UK Distributor: Searchlight Pictures
UK Release Date: 20 March 2026
WHO’S IN READY OR NOT 2: HERE I COME?
Samara Weaving, Kathryn Newton, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shawn Hatosy, David Cronenberg, Elijah Wood, Néstor Carbonell, Kevin Durand, Olivia Cheng, Varun Saranga, Nadeem Umar-Khitab, Juan Pablo Romero, Masa Lizdek, Maia Jae, Daniel Beirne, Antony Hall
WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?
Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (directors), Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy (writers), Bradley J. Fischer, William Sherak, James Vanderbilt and Tripp Vinson (producers), Sven Faulconer (composer), Brett Jutkiewicz (cinematographer), Jay Prychidny (editor)
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
Grace (Weaving) is forced into a much deadlier and more personal game of hide-and-seek than before…
WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON READY OR NOT 2: HERE I COME?
Like most horror movies, Ready or Not really didn’t need a sequel. Sure, the breakout film for directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett was both a critical and commercial success, earning a high 89% on Rotten Tomatoes while grossing nearly ten times its $6 million budget, but it was very much a self-contained story with a seemingly definitive conclusion that wrapped everything up in the most airtight – not to mention explosive – way possible. To continue things from there would take away some of the impact of its final moments, which given how memorably things ended would be pretty detrimental.
But this is Hollywood we’re talking about: if something is even just the tiny bit successful, there’ll almost certainly be more to come. So now we have Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, which by some miracle isn’t a complete disaster of a sequel because returning directors Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett, along with screenwriters Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy (also back from the first film), are capable of delivering fun, gory entertainment designed to make audiences laugh and cheer at just the right moments. However, much of the surprise and freshness of the original is not as prominent here, settling for more of the same but on a slightly bigger scale that doesn’t always equal more fun.
The film picks up immediately where the first one left off, with Grace MacCaullay (Samara Weaving) sat in her blood-drenched wedding dress outside the burning home of her now-deceased husband and in-laws, a bunch of Satanists who attempted and failed to make her their latest sacrifice during a deadly game of hide-and-seek. After a brief hospital visit, she’s abducted and brought to a much larger but no less secluded estate where some of the world’s wealthiest and most influential families have gathered for an even bigger version of the same game. As a mysterious lawyer (Elijah Wood) explains, the prize for them is a now-vacant position on their high council which will essentially grant them unlimited power, so finding and killing Grace this time is very much a winner-takes-all situation. But adding to the stakes, at least for Grace, is the unexpected inclusion of her estranged younger sister Faith (Kathryn Newton) who’s now stuck hiding alongside her as numerous assailants – among them Spanish entrepreneur Ignacio El Caido (Néstor Carbonell) and psychotic media mogul twins Ursula (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Titus (Shawn Hatosy) – attempt to seek them out.
The introduction of Newton’s Faith is a big reason why Ready or Not 2: Here I Come is not on par with its predecessor. Newton herself does perfectly fine with what she’s given, but the character’s mere existence is ludicrous given how explicitly it was stated last time how Weaving’s Grace, a foster child, claimed to never even know her true family, hence her burning desire to fit into the one that’s actively trying to kill her. To suddenly retcon that with a whole backstory between the two, one that at the very least should have been mentioned previously, not only makes a lot of her motivations from last time make little sense but also feels like a particularly forced excuse to raise the personal stakes higher this time round. Even in a universe where spiritual demons exist and people can suddenly combust like blood-filled balloons, it’s very difficult to suspend disbelief when it comes to this sister suddenly existing out of nowhere.
On top of that, Faith is the kind of irritating character who has such a disdain for her sister (all stemming from abandonment issues, naturally) that she’s always giving Grace a hard time for her past mistakes, much of it coming in the form of snarky and passive-aggressive comments, even after the latter has saved her from certain death a bunch of times, mostly from her own recklessness and poor judgement of the situation. She really serves little other purpose than to give Grace someone to protect, but the character is neither endearing nor likeable enough to make it acceptable as to why our reluctant hero would go out of her way to save her (yes she’s her sister, but we and perhaps even the writers didn’t even know she existed until now). At least there’s a good antagonistic spark between Weaving and Newton to make these sisters’ constant bickering a little more tolerable, but the film could genuinely have been improved by removing this character entirely and focusing much more on the fiercely feral “I am more than done with this shit” energy that Weaving brings to her role.
Every now and then, as they did on Abigail and both their Scream entries, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett will showcase their talent for delivering some fun and darkly humorous set-pieces which give some much-needed personality to the film. A standout central sequence involves some inspired physical comedy, a well-placed Bonnie Tyler track, and even a bazooka which collectively makes for some gloriously unhinged slapstick that earns a few devilish laughs. Similar to the first film, the villains themselves are also pretty fun to watch since they are generally incompetent when it comes to planning and committing full-blown murder, some of them even throwing their own kin under the bus in order to avoid being put in harm’s way, which in one case ends up backfiring spectacularly when it comes to their own fortune and assets. Among the bad guys are some devilish performances, chief among them Hatosy who is great at leaning into the cartoonishly psychopathic tendencies of his character, who’s essentially if Kendall Roy from Succession became and even embraced becoming Patrick Bateman, though others such as Gellar aren’t given quite as much scenery to chew on (which, given the recent news about the cancellation of the planned Buffy reboot, is surely a further blow to fans of hers).
But while it’s far from a terrible sequel, made all the more impressive given that it never even needed to exist in the first place, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come doesn’t come close to recapturing the magic of the original. It’s more of the same, which isn’t a bad thing since the same is still entertaining enough, but some unnecessary add-ons make it a follow-up that perhaps should have been hidden away until some vital script changes could make it a sequel that’s fully worth seeking out.
SO, TO SUM UP…
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come is an okay sequel that comes with some entertainingly gory sequences as well as a couple of fun scenery-chewing performances, but certain frustrating new additions feel forced and ultimately unnecessary, preventing there from being as much freshness as there was in the original.
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