Ready or Not 2: Here I Come could have saved itself the effort.
You know when you’re really rooting for something that should succeed? I know some people have their sports-ball teams. I felt something vaguely similar when one of my favorite esports teams, EnVyUs, was announced as the Dallas Fuel roster for the inaugural season of Overwatch League in 2017. Signing the EnVyUs roster meant Dallas Fuel was a dream team. We were gonna win the whole darn thing!
We would wind up going 12-28.
“That’s great, Kat, but what does it have to do with Ready or Not 2: Here I Come?”
Fair. EnVyUs had what seemed to be the right tools going in, but failed time and time again to execute correctly, resulting in a season that’s way more losses than wins. That’s how Ready or Not 2 felt. They had the pieces in place! They had a really solid script! Do you know how many sequels fail on the script? Me neither, but it’s a non zero amount. It had very competent actors (not as much you, Kathryn Newton, or you, XQC). They had $14 million to make it! That’s really high for horror.
But the execution was…rough. Even really competent character actors struggled in normal action choreography and with basic on-screen chemistry. It was really, noticeably strange. Shawn Hatosy (Dr. Abbott from The Pitt) couldn’t interact with another person physically? Buffy doesn’t know how to move her face? Dreamy eyes suddenly lacks all charm? WTF is happening? At least Elijah Wood put in a rock-solid performance (no surprise there).
The script was as corny and charming and playful and over-the-top violent as the first one is. Stupid but fun dialogue, a decent amount of character background for a violent romp, some fun reveals about motive or history, a couple unexpected turns with how rules work, a fun soundtracks, some “feel good” fatality lines…
So what caused the execution to fail? I can’t figure it out. The same writers, the same directors, not vastly dissimilar production teams, timelines, budgets, talent levels, etc.
Maybe I’m judging it too harshly. Maybe we weren’t in the right mood to watch it. Maybe I just think if you’re going to do “sisters on screen”, you gotta do better than just “Hey, they kind of look like each other!”. Trust me on that.
Kat: 4.2
Kas: 4