Ready-made treat for horror fans
Review
Ready or Not (R16, 95 mins)
Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett
Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★★★★
It seems to me that comedy/ horror is one of the toughest mixes to get right. Every film school grad thinks they have a decent idea for a funny-but-scary good time, that would just slay at the box office, if they could only get the finance. But the truth is, it’s a harder style than most.
The critics and award juries regularly hand out the stars and the baubles to the year’s allegedly serious dramas.
But making an audience jump on cue, or making them laugh when you want them to, takes just as much skill, if not more, as making them reach for a hankie.
Timing, as someone once said, is everything.
So when a humble and little-heralded wee gem like Ready or Not comes floating down the turnpike, we should celebrate it for what it is – a film that mostly succeeds in a genre that is more often than not just a fast-track to the DVD sale bin.
Grace (Samara Weaving, in a performance that should see her get a lot more roles in the future) is set to marry into the massively wealthy Le Domas dynasty.
Youngest son Alex has proposed, and now Grace is about to meet the family at their hulking country mansion, before a wedding ceremony in the house’s vast grounds.
Everything seems to be going pretty well, until Alex tells Grace that there is a tradition of a ‘‘games night’’ before a new member is admitted to the family.
And the game chosen for Grace to play is hide and seek, with the seekers all carrying firearms, crossbows and axes. It’s not going to end well.
On the screen, Ready or Not plays out like a looser and daffier cousin to Get Out.
The dynamic of the rich hunting the poor for sport is intact, but with some nonsense about Satan worship and ancient curses in place of Jordan Peele’s more overt race-based allegory.
And this film’s complete lack of seriousness or message – I guess there is a satire of privilege and marriage in there somewhere, if you want to find it – turns out to be its greatest strength.
Film-makers Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (Devil’s
Due) just want to entertain us – and they succeed.
The performances, from Weaving and Mark O’Brien as Alex especially, are uniformly energetic and committed, and Andie MacDowell steps into the role of the family’s demented matriarch like a champion.
Ready or Not does exactly what you want it to.
There are plenty of laughs, a couple of well assembled jumpscares, tonnes of gore, and a gratifying absence of morality or sermonising.