I believe the horror genre is one of the most difficult ones to get correct or at least, to make good enough that people are going to enjoy it. I love it when good films come out in this realm but unfortunately most of them are not very pleasing. More often than not horror films are just more of the same of something that has been many times before and this was particularly true in the 80's where all horror films were essentially the same thing over and over again.
With Ready or Not the writers and director were trying to do something different and they in-fact, managed to pull that off. Unfortunately this movie is filled with so many impractical plot holes that it is difficult to take it seriously. Combine this with an extremely annoying scream of the main character and mostly I was very ready for it to be over when it was.
The film starts out brilliantly because without being told anything about what is going on we are put into a very large mansion with two children who are clearly terrified and perhaps being pursued by various creatures or other humans in the dark. They witness someone they know being killed and then we simply fast-forward to the present day, which I believe was 20 or 30 years later. The story is revealed to us slowly and eventually we find out what is going on with this whacky and extremely wealthy family and how an outsider to the family, a woman named "Grace" is about to marry into the Le Domas family.
Grace is not of a wealthy upbringing and even though her fiance is very supporting of her she is quite concerned that the rest of the family is not going to be very welcoming of her. Why is this family wealthy? Where here is one of the things that I have a problem with as far as the story is concerned. Among "other things" the vast family wealth was acquired by generations of successful board games. Yeah, you read that right... board games. This is a rather important part of the plot because we need a reason for this family to be obsessed or perhaps obligated to participate in games which leads to the ritual that takes place on Grace's wedding night. I get that they needed to introduce this into the film somehow but the idea that people could possibly become billionaires by creating successful board games is just a bit too loopy for me.
I don't consider this a spoiler because it is in the trailer as well as kind of established early on in the film, but due to unfortunate bad luck, Grace's wedding game, which is determined by some mysterious box, is one that must result in the death of someone and quite likely, her.
The family initially refers to the game as a simple game of "Hide and Seek" which initially Grace finds amusing and stupid but it isn't until it is a bit too late that she realizes that this is no game and that the objective of the existing family members that she just married into is that she must be killed by their hands.
Now I don't think you need to be a world-class psychic to see exactly what is coming here. Grace is clearly the lead character in the story so obviously she is going to emerge victorious in the end. Like many other horror films, this is something I find very boring in that you already know the conclusion of the film, it is just a question of how we get there. This might have been fun 30 or 40 years ago but these days I prefer my movies to provide me with some sort of twist or at least some kind of suspense rather than the ending being clearly telegraphed right from the start. This is the problem I have with almost all Hollywood films: There is mostly no real question about how this is going to turn out. You know Grace will be successful. The question is only how will she do it and how gruesome are the kills going to be along the way.
The answer to that is that it is pretty darn gruesome but if you are an avid gore-horror fan like I am, these kills are pretty tame in comparison to other such films I have seen. It could end up being disturbing to other people though and this is certainly not a film for children to see.
An additional downside of this movie is that most of the family members are just downright weird. The fat one who knows nothing about anything other than the fact that he is accustomed to a luxury lifestyle is likely the most annoying and this is where more impractical scenes take place such as when in the middle of a deadly hunt he thinks it would be a good idea to go have a poo and watch a YouTube video on how to use a crossbow, which is the weapon he was assigned. It's just stupid to do something like that but it is just one of the many attempts on the part of the writers to introduce some "comic relief" into the story. "Fitch" is the main source of the attempts at comic relief and the character is played by Kristian Bruun, who much like the rest of the cast, is someone I have never heard of.
In fact, the only person in this film that you are likely to so much as recognize is Andie MacDowell.
Through the magic that is botox and other plastic surgery Andie has managed to remain looking about the same age as she appeared to be in Groundhog Day but I'm about to make everyone that was alive when that film was released feel a bit old by telling you that MacDowell is nearly 70 years old!
Now, on to what made the film almost unbearable to me: In an effort to try to portray how terrifying this experience would be for Grace they apparently gave Samara Weaving some creative freedom as far as how she was going to get loud when she screams.
This being a horror film you would expect there to be a lot of screaming and there is. Grace screams a LOT in this movie and the way in which she screams is difficult to describe. Not only is it shrill but it almost has a vibrato to it. It comes across as unnatural and just annoying. At about the 117th time that she does it I put my hand on the volume button because it was disturbing not in a scary way but in a "I can't believe they let her do that in this film" sort of way.
As for the impractical aspects of this film it's just a lot of stuff like people not behaving like you would expect them to when they are faced with a potential death situation, the fact that this house, regardless of how huge it actually is would not be something that someone could just continue running in forever, and the fact that the baddies never seem to be all that interested in entering the "servant corridors" is just plain dumb.
This movie was made on a relatively small budget and killed it at the box-office raking in 10 times the budget in sales. So F**K my opinion I guess! it also has quite high marks on both IMDB and RT. This is one of those times that I disagree with the masses and therefore will not completely tell everyone to avoid it.
Should I watch it?
I will acknowledge that they did well with their rather small $6 million budget and created something that is visually appealing. The impractical nature of most of the situations that arise were a bit too much for me to look past but I realize that I am very fickle when it comes to things like this and could be wrong about whether or not others will enjoy it.
I realize that my opinion is a bit jaded because I am extremely critical of horror films especially when they are so predictable. If the foregone conclusion that Grace is going to succeed isn't something that bothers you then I think there are people out there that would find this entertaining. For me, I think that Korean and Japanese horror masters have kind of made it impossible for me to enjoy stuff like this but for others that are more casual viewers you might actually find this movie refreshingly different.. Well that is other than Grace's absolutely horrible screams. You be the judge! Tell me I am wrong and how!
You can legally stream this movie on FuboTV exclusively. It is available for rent or to buy on basically all other streaming providers
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