Mark Reviews Movies: READY OR NOT

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 20, 2019

You're not just marrying the person you love. You're also marrying into that person's family. Such friendly advice is more of a warning in Ready or Not.

The guy our protagonist has decided to marry seems nice and loving enough. His family—man, this family—is another story entirely. On the surface, they make it seem as if Grace (Samara Weaving) has completely lucked out when it comes to finding the right husband.

The guy comes from an inordinately wealthy dynasty, which gained its fortune by making and selling assorted board games. There's nothing controversial about that. In fact, it seems so innocent and wholesome that there's almost nothing for which one could criticize the Le Domas clan—except maybe that their products might have caused a few arguments at family functions and friendly get-togethers.

For his part, Alex (Mark O'Brien), Grace's soon-to-be husband, seems like a stand-up guy, who clearly loves her and, despite his trepidation about settling down, has proposed to Grace, a foster kid who has spent most of her life dreaming of having a permanent family to call her own.

Everything appears to be relatively normal as the wedding is about to start. Yes, Grace is worried a bit, because Alex's father clearly doesn't like her and his brother has a tendency to drunkenly hit on her. Comparatively, though, this is nothing. It's nothing that a little time and attention can't fix, and if things really don't go well, there's always the fact that Alex has been estranged from his family for some time. If it actually came down to such a choice, Grace would probably be pretty comfortable in the knowledge that her husband would pick her over the family he had rejected for a number of years.

It would never come down to that, right? Surely, Grace's charms will win over the hold-outs in Alex's family, and if they don't, that's only a couple of awkward holidays each year about which to worry.

Guy Busick and Ryan Murphy's screenplay is particularly clever in how it streamlines this setup with such an easy-to-understand and oh-so relatable premise. We don't need to know the ins and outs of these characters and their relationships, because they're all right there—in the way that Alex's dad Tony (Henry Czerny) whispers his doubts while taking a picture with his son, in the way older brother Daniel (Adam Brody) does seem a little too curious about how his sister-in-law is handling things, in the way Alex's mom Becky (Andie MacDowell) frames the marriage as a way to get her son back into the family fold, in the way that Aunt Helene (Nicky Guadagni) can't stop scowling at her nephew's bride. All of it seems kind of normal, if just a little weird.

The real premise of the film, though, is more in line with its prologue, which sees the Le Domas family 30 years earlier. It's another wedding. The family is chasing the groom, and the bride, after pleading for mercy for her new husband, eventually acquiesces to the rest of her bloodline. The groom, shot twice with arrows, is carried away to some unholy matter in a secret room of the family's grand mansion.

Basically, Grace becomes the prey in a demented game of hide-and-seek. She has to hide until dawn, and the rest of the family will try to find her. She's completely unaware, though, that the entire family is armed with assorted weapons—rifles, pistols, an ax, a crossbow. For the 18 months that they've been a couple, Alex forgot to mention that his family has a belief that the fate of the entire clan rests on a deal the great-grandfather made to gain his fortune. Every so often, the sacrifice of a new family member must be made. The other hunters include Alex and Daniel's sister Emilie (Melanie Scrofano), her husband Fitch (Kristian Bruun), and Daniel's wife Charity (Elyse Levesque), as well as an incredibly loyal butler (played by John Ralston).

From that point on, the film becomes nothing more than a chase. It's quite a chase, though—through the dim hallways of the mansion and some old hidden passageways behind the walls, with the family acting as if the murder of their new relative is a matter of life or death for all of them (They genuinely believe it is). Meanwhile, Grace has to go through years of traumatizing experiences—beyond any stretch of the imagination—with the in-laws over the course of a night. In that last regard, Weaving's performance is almost preternatural in how much she accomplishes—from building up to believable terror, to communicating the underlying insecurities of the character, to developing a sense of gallows humor about the whole ordeal.

The film was directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (stylized in the first part of the opening credits as "Radio Silence"), who know they have a humdinger of a gimmick, a screenplay with a diabolical sense of humor, and a story that somehow gets weirder—even after establishing a life-or-death game of hide-and-seek in a creepy old mansion—on their hands. They don't get in the way of the material, relying on the in-tune pitch of the performances, the grimy rot of Brett Jutkiewicz's cinematography, and their own senses of pacing and comedic timing to do most of the work.

The result is funny, gruesome, strange, and, above all else, energetic. Ready or Not is a wicked, wild ride.

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