611: Ready or Not 2: Here I Come

[00:00:00] Hello everybody, welcome back to the Film Buds Podcast. This is episode number 611, and my name is Henry. This time around, I'm going to be tackling Ready or Not 2, Here I Come. It is directed by Matt Bettinelli-Ulpin and Tyler Gillett, who also did the first one. It stars Samara Weaving, Catherine Newton, Elijah Wood, Sarah Michelle Gellar, David Cronenberg, the director in there,

[00:00:26] weirdly. And the synopsis is, After surviving one deadly game, Grace and her sister Faith must now outrun four rival families competing for a powerful throne. Winner takes all. I talked about the first Ready or Not a few weeks ago, maybe a month ago, during the They Will Kill You episode, and I think we did review it when it first came out. There will be spoilers ahead, so fair warning. Despite my

[00:00:53] feelings about the first film, I was still curious to see this one. I liked the directors. They did Scream 5 and 6, Abigail, all of which I really liked. I didn't know much at all about the story. I heard pretty decent things. A lot of people said it was about on par with the first one, and in the end, I did enjoy it. Let me know if you feel differently. I actually like it more than the first one, with one of the main reasons being is, I'm glad in this case, they dropped pretty much all of the commentary

[00:01:23] that was in the first one about Eat the Rich and all that. This essentially just becomes a wacky cat and mouse, most dangerous game, rat race sort of blend. And I think that worked. It was creative, it was fun, it had good horror moments. I always like when a movie can set up rules for something, like a game in this case. All right, these characters can do this, or you're on the run, these other people are going to chase you, they can't do this, or they can't do that.

[00:01:50] Samara Weaving and Catherine Newton were great together. I totally bought them as sisters, and I like how they have made Samara Weaving's character into this new kind of final girl. She has the iconic costume of this bloody, torn-up wedding dress, the blood in her hair and on her face, not to mention the converses. I'm a huge Elijah Wood fan, and I'm glad he had such a big part in this.

[00:02:15] I wasn't expecting that, but he was great. Some of the other standout moments, I like the idea of when these people in the family do wrong, or they kill someone else in their family, they go against one of the rules, they will actually explode. And there's this running joke of Samara Weaving constantly getting covered in blood because people blow up right in front of her. The family that was completely incompetent at using any kind of weapon, like the father has this great

[00:02:42] sniper rifle and he can't hit anything. The daughter tries to avenge him, and she shoots the bazooka backwards. That was enjoyable because you could see that happening in this case. These oity-toity rich people think that they're gonna pull off this incredible victory, but they're useless. The washing machine kill was by far the most effectively gross. The final 10 minutes or so,

[00:03:07] where you have this twist of a final kill that was very satisfying, and then the tossing of the ring into this pit, and everyone jumps in there and they all start exploding. Samara Weaving's black wedding dress during that sequence as well. One of the things that brought it down some is there are some lulls here and there. Like, it gets, at certain points, I think a little repetitive because first, there will be one of the family members trying to kill them. Somehow, the sisters will kill them

[00:03:35] eventually, and then there's this waiting period for the next one to show up, and so you kind of start to feel the rhythm a little too much. But it's not too long. It's only about an hour 40. Some of the writing is a little iffy too. Like, I think the Titus character, who comes across as this very macho, merciless character, that performance and his dialogue, that was at times a little too goofy. Like, it just didn't totally fit the rest of the world. I thought that his sister, which was played by

[00:04:04] the actress who was Daphne in the Scooby-Doo movies. I really enjoyed her. There's one sequence between the two sisters when Catherine Newton is saying, you left me because they were apparently foster kids, and then when Samara, who was the older one, came of age, she went to college, and Samara Weaving says, I got this amazing scholarship in New York City, so that way, since we don't have parents,

[00:04:29] I could look after you and have a good job, etc. Newton's character just doesn't seem to agree at all with this. And I was thinking, that seems pretty ridiculous, because in reality, if you're two foster kids going out into the world with no education, no nothing, what kind of life are you expecting to have after that? Like, it's going to be pretty difficult to achieve anything. So that just

[00:04:52] came across as very lazy to me, and kind of forcing conflict into this relationship. The soundtrack was good. It's always nice to start off a movie with Amy Winehouse. Can't go wrong there. Three and a half out of five.