Just as “John Wick: Chapter Two” took the relatively simple world set up by the first film about an assassin avenging the death of his dog and blew it up into a universe with its own mythology, “Ready or Not 2: Here I Come” builds on the premise of the hit 2019 thriller with such gusto that it requires a character to be around to explain the by-laws out of a giant book. The clutter of “Here I Come” will be off-putting to some looking for that sleek, no-nonsense “one woman vs. her in-laws” approach of the first film but returning directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett and writers Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy are having so much fun in this expanded sandbox that it becomes hard to complain. Of course, it helps a great deal to have a wickedly fun ensemble ready to play this murderous game, led once again by a physical, engaged, immediate performance from Samara Weaving.
“Ready or Not 2” opens immediately after the end of the first film. Grace (Weaving) survived the night from Hell (literally), vanquishing the Le Domas family after winning the deadly game of Hide and Seek. She collapses into an ambulance, only to be awoken handcuffed to her hospital bed. She has some explaining to do about the dead bodies in the burned-down mansion, and her estranged sister Faith (Kathryn Newton) is there to help with what is basically a “previously on” exposition dump.
With that out of the way, the fun really starts when the all-powerful Chester Danforth (David Cronenberg) is informed that Grace survived her wedding night. How much does Danforth run the world? In one of the film’s funniest early bits, he’s watching war footage on cable TV news and just makes a quick phone call to put through a ceasefire, which is then updated on live TV. He controls everything.
This puppet master texts a mysterious group chat that “the ball is in play” before being murdered by his twin children: Titus (Shawn Hatosy) and Ursula (Sarah Michelle Gellar). A montage reveals the recipients of the news about Grace’s survival, who turn out to be heads of families like the Le Domas clan. Of course, they weren’t alone in their Capitalist Satanic Cult, and their death has initiated an incredible by-law in the rules of the game: When someone survives, as Grace did, they have a chance to take the throne held by Danforth, becoming the most powerful person in the world. It’s a sort of reward for winning. But it essentially comes with a double or nothing match in that Grace has to survive another night with the families coming for that throne on her tail.
Grace and Faith are drugged and whisked away to a multi-acre property owned by the Danforths to be hunted across the landscape. Hunters include the Danforth twins, the sniper-wielding Ignacio El Caido (Nestor Carbonell), the sword-swinging Wan Chen Xing (Olivia Chang), the hard-partying Madhu (Varun Saranga) & Viraj Rajan (Nadeem Umar-Khitab), and an array of their children, siblings, and partners. Laying down rules about what happens if hunters kill each other or how the line of succession rolls down the family tree if one of them dies is a wonderfully smirking Elijah Wood, playing a sort of consigliere to the chaos.
After a lengthy but funny set-up, the directors sometimes known as Radio Silence get to work shooting, punching, stabbing, and spontaneously combusting their players. They smartly don’t repeat the beats of the first film, but those who liked the relative simplicity of that chamber piece may be put off by the sheer number of characters, battles, and settings here as Faith and Grace do everything they can to survive the night.
There are a few places where the expansion weakens the project more than others, including the half-baked estranged sister subplot between Faith and Grace—the writing and performances never sell the idea that these two ever knew each other—and even a few action sequences that could have been tightened by half. In particular, the violence against the female protagonists in this film can feel a bit lingering to the point of brutality, especially a beating that Newton’s character takes that shifts the film from escapism to ugliness. There’s nothing about a franchise in which people turn into exploding sacks of blood that should make you feel uncomfortable.
To be fair, one of the reasons for that discomfort is because “The Pitt” star Hatosy is so good at playing someone truly awful. He essentially leans into Titus Danforth as if Patrick Bateman from “American Psycho” had the power of the actual Devil behind him. It’s a performance that starts off amusingly funny and then becomes increasingly chilling as Hatosy’s intensity grows.
It’s the standout of a strong supporting cast all around. It’s wonderful to have Gellar back in an action groove, Wood’s presence buoys the entire film, and the cavalcade of rich idiots just waiting to be dispatched is cleverly sketched just on the verge of parody. Some will argue that the cultural stereotypes that the council families lean into border on offensive, but the writers and directors thread that needle by keeping them consistently unpredictable. Who will win the game is never really in question, so the success of the film comes down to how well it’s played.
In the end, the entire team behind this venture understands one of its strongest assets: An increasing desire to watch capitalist monsters get what’s coming to them. In a year when news stories have proliferated about the unchecked evil at the core of so many businesses and seats of power around the world, there’s something almost comforting about watching an ordinary woman and her sister fight the system right down to the bowels of Hell. We could all use a little Grace and Faith.
This review was filed from the world premiere at the SXSW Film Festival. It opens on March 20, 2026.
