Ready or Not 2 review: Bigger but not better

5 hours ago 2

Published Mar 13, 2026, 9:30 AM EDT

This overstuffed sequel has the same problems as Knives Out 2

Grace (Samara Weaving), a woman wearing a bloodstained wedding dress and a suit jacket, holds a shotgun while hiding in a hotel kitchen in Ready or Not 2

There are a surprising number of similarities between Rian Johnson’s murder mystery Knives Out and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s horror comedy Ready or Not. They both came out in 2019 and focus on a rich family trying to destroy a woman they see as a gold-digging interloper. They’re also both followed up with sequels with almost entirely new casts that take a far broader approach to their “eat the rich” message but wind up losing the tight focus that made the original films so remarkable.

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come picks up right where Ready or Not left off, with blood-soaked bride Grace Le Domas (Samara Weaving) sitting on the steps of devil-worshipping Le Domas family manor as the police arrive to investigate the wedding night massacre. Turns out, by surviving until dawn, Grace not only caused the Le Domas family to spontaneously explode in ludicrous amounts of gore, she also triggered a power struggle between a group of other rich families with their own Satanic pacts.

Grace is admitted to a hospital just long enough for the doctors to call her emergency contact — her estranged younger sister Faith (Kathryn Newton). Then the two women are kidnapped and brought to an isolated casino resort for a new ritual hunt. Like a video game character who’s fully healed after respawning, Grace doesn’t seem bothered by any of the wounds she sustained in the first movie or the injuries she suffers in this one. They just seem to power her feral screams.

Grace (Samara Weaving), a woman wearing a bloadsoaked wedding dress, and Faith (Kathryn Newton) wearing a denim overshirt, share shots of tequila in a hotel ballroom

Ready or Not was a hilarious mashup of rom-com and slasher films. Grace starts off worried about making a good impression on her fiance’s eccentric relatives and winds up having to fight for her life. There’s no way to repeat that shift of stakes, but writers Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy are still at their best when focusing on dysfunctional family humor. While representatives of each clan chase Grace and Faith around the resort, the rest of their families drink, snack, and watch the action from a penthouse like depraved sports fans.

They also spend a lot of time arguing with The Lawyer (Elijah Wood), an ominous emcee who dictates the rules of the game and adjudicates conflicts between the family with an otherworldly calm that contrasts the manic chaos around him. These scenes are a highlight, and Ready or Not 2 would have been stronger if it spent more time building up the new characters in this social setting and less on them bungling the hunt.

Busick and Murphy also devote too much screentime to the fractured relationship between Grace and Faith in order to build a very blunt juxtaposition with the tight teamwork of the film’s other siblings — twins Ursula (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Titus (Shawn Hatosy) Danforth. Gellar does a phenomenal job turning on the sinister charm as she tries to manipulate everyone around her, while Hatosy offers a dark version of the gravitas he brings to HBO’s The Pitt by combining it with raw physicality and bloodlust.

The Lawyer (Elijah Wood), a man wearing a blue suit with a goat head lapel pin, holds out a gold ring while standing in a lamplit room in Ready or Not 2.

The restriction that the families can only use weapons that existed when their progenitors made their deals with the devil provides an excuse for a wide variety of archaic weaponry, and there’s something genuinely impressive about watching Titus furiously swing around a pickaxe. The Danforths engage in minor sabotage to get an edge on their rivals, but I wish there was even more active sniping between the families so Grace didn’t have to become such a superhero just to survive.

While there aren’t as many big laughs or surprises as the first film, Ready or Not 2 has some incredible moments. There’s an absolutely deranged fight scene set to “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and a Satanist ritual that evokes the goth excess of Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. But the payoff is spread a bit too thin amid characters who serve little purpose beyond adding to Grace’s kill count. An overstuffed sequel didn’t kill the Knives Out series, and it probably won’t stop Ready or Not’s rampage, either. But if Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett send Grace on a third killing spree, hopefully they’ll make it a bit more focused.

Ready or Not 2 opens in theaters on March 20.

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