Ready or Not

I actually feel sorry for the film. The reviews here are not exactly favorable, but I won’t be as strict. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't having fun. Granted, it was incredibly silly, and it would be considered a horror film only by someone who gets scared by fairy tales. It worked great as a black comedy, though. I’ve never been horrified by the sight of blood and guts, so I appreciated the funny moments in Clara, Tina and Dora’s best scenes, I also enjoyed Grace’s (fuck!)monologues, and the finale sure beats any film featuring a minefield. If you share my twisted sense of humor, go for it. (06/01/2020)

Grace has just got married and she realises it wasn't a good idea. Her new in-laws want to play hide-and-seek with her. If they don't find her by morning, she wins. If they find her, she'll probably die in a cruel ritual. It'll be fun. Ready or Not is a blackly humorous horror film that alternates fairly brutal scenes with a lot of gritty humour, but also some solidly suspenseful moments. It has a great main character, and the only problem in the end is that they didn't step it up a notch. As a whole, though, it's pretty good. (27/08/2019)

Jordan Peele's open arms for horror social satire might suggest that the genre is being given some relevance again after the era of stupid ghost flicks, but that would be to forget that combing social ills in extreme hyperbole was already in the job description of the Purge tetralogy. And that was a load of crap. Ready or Not isn't that bad, and there's definitely a bigger head behind it, as revealed by some witty dialogue (for me, the argument about how tradition is important, but when you're leaking in your shoes, you start to consider that after all, its author would also have used contemporary technology if it had been available to him at the time) or the hilariously bestial ending. But the problem is that the whole thing is terribly unbelievable – the characters of the rich are simple caricatures without a shred of respect, the violence doesn't hurt, the fire doesn't burn, the vulgarities ring false, you don't trust the actors to take a drag from a cigarette, and the violence is the kind of cool domestic hurt where blood spurts, brains stick to walls, and wounds open, but in that safe movie way where it's actually kind of funny. Luckily, Samara Weaving is a wild one who gets it all right, and her clucking at the end will probably be the only thing I'll remember from the film a year from now. (25/11/2019)

I thought back to Sam Raimi's films, the good ones that is, and I couldn't help but marvel at how much fun I was having. The bloody black-humor hide-and-seek can definitely surprise and thrill, and if it weren't for a few slightly weaker and more predictable parts (the escape into the woods), I wouldn't have much to complain about. Apart from Samara Weaving (unlike in Netflix's The Babysitter, she's the heroine this time around, and it occurs to me that the two films have a lot in common and would make an ideal program for an evening) and the other admittedly lesser known but great (to watch) actors, I have to single out Brian Tyler's music, which makes for just the right atmosphere at just the right moments. The scene of the ritual and the one after it are without exaggeration unforgettable. (03/09/2019)

A decent, inventive slasher, which turns an ordinary family dinner into something you won’t forget easily. Moreover with the lead role of the bride played by the fair Samara Weaving, who has witchcraft, fear and mysteriousness already in her name. Even though nothing that happens in the film is actually her fault. (28/02/2020)