Ready or Not 2: Here I Come had its world première at SXSW, 13 Mar 2026
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come pulls an Evil Dead sequel trick on Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s 2019 original, which is to say it starts almost exactly where the first film ended, with blood-spattered bride Grace Le Domas (Samara Weaving) – née MacCaullay – sitting and smoking on the outside stairs of the blazing manor whose superrich owners the Le Domas family she has briefly joined in matrimony before outwitting and destroying them during a night of hellish highjinks. Now she will be drawn into another deadly game of hide and seek, as five international clans compete to hunt and kill her before sunrise, with the prize the head seat on a Satanic council that runs the world. This time around, though, the (black) cat is out of the bag, as we now know what we learnt very late in the original: that the demonic magic in which these privileged families believe is all too real, and can intervene explosively, wiping out entire bloodlines, whenever ancient rules, inscribed in a tome kept by the mysterious Lawyer (Elijah Wood), are broken. This is a film where the small print, however arbitrary-seeming, is diabolically important, and the consequences of deviation are instantly messy.
What is new here is the arrival of Grace’s estranged younger sister Faith (Kathryn Newton), on hand to play tag-team with Grace if the two can stop bickering and rediscover their deeply buried love for each other. Meanwhile the greatest threat to them comes from another set of siblings, the twins Ursula (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Titus Danforth (Shawn Hatosy), who are determined to keep the Ring of Power (vel sim.) in their name, but whose own bond is less strong than it seems. Indeed all manner of family dysfunctions are on the table, in a dynastic death match that will see a collection of narcissists and psychopaths doing their very worst to ascend to world supremacy.
Unfolding where The Most Dangerous Game (1932) meets Satanic Panic (2019), Ready or Not 2: Here I Come is a comic, even cartoonish affair. Even the most grievous of injuries may quickly be brushed off and forgotten, while supposedly well-trained killers may struggle against two unarmed women in handcuffs – but all this can be overlooked when the scenario is so knowingly over the top and when even minor characters are sketched with grotesque glee. The script of returning writers Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy is full of surreal zingers – and as in the first film, there is real pleasure in seeing entitled affluent élites taken down a peg by a pair of working-class foster children who are only too happy to see the whole system destroyed from the inside.
Add to this some very funny goat business, and a perfect cameo from David Cronenberg as the ailing Danforth patriarch (whose estate, with its hotel, casino and golf course, recalls that of another ageing contemporary American potentate), and you have the makings of a sequel that follows all the established rules of the original, while introducing a few of its own by-laws and loopholes. For amid all the misbehaving moguls and gloopy gore, these sisters are doing it for themselves, and care too much about each other to be bothered with world domination. Good for them – and for us.
strap: Matt Bettinnelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett’s comic horror sequel makes two sisters the most dangerous game for superrich Satanists
© Anton Bitel
