As nerds are often wont to do, a small group of friends and I have met on no fewer than 82 Sundays to watch a randomly-chosen, often bad (even oftener terrible) sci-fi movie. It started as a nearly unrelated project to explore the cultural influence that Star Trek – particularly the original show – has had on movies and television in the modern age. It quickly devolved into the equivalent of “let’s put these 20 movies from this list of worst sci-fi movies ever on a wheel and watch them”. Every October, this becomes “random/bad horror movie night”. This week, we watched the 2019 Die Hard ripoff Ready or Not. Buckle up. Spoilers abound.
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The premise is about 80% of what’s going on in Ready or Not, and we all know what that means. It means 90% of the movie is pretty lame. Grace and Alex are getting married, but little does she know, his great-grandfather sold his (and his living and future family’s) soul(s) to the devil, disguised as a man named Le Bail. In exchange for investment in his playing card business and guaranteed success, any time someone marries into the family they have to play a random game. Could be charades, could be old maid… but the only bad result is if the new family member draws hide and seek.
GUESS WHICH ONE GRACE DRAWS. I’LL WAIT.
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The rules of hide and seek are just like you remember: hide in a giant mansion until dawn while a dozen or so ultra-rich people with no souls hunt you down with antique weapons and try to kill you. If you survive, they all explode. If you don’t, they sacrifice you to Satan. So that’s what happens. With basically no plot depth, what could go wrong?
The poster (above) is obviously designed to make you think it’s this turning of the tables, that the hunted bride becomes the hunter. That does not happen – she does wear that bandolier full of elephant gun slugs, but for some reason they’re basically the only thing in the house that’s only for decoration. It is a Die Hard ripoff, though. While she doesn’t kill anyone until near the end, she’s constantly confronting her new family members who are either jacked up on cocaine, or drunk, or stupid, or children and getting away or disarming them. The child is the only family member that actually draws blood from her, but she’s injured multiple times and nearly sacrificed on an altar at least twice.
Ready or Not is sloppy. It had almost definitely been rewritten mid-production, and it was full of comedy that almost entirely fell flat. Good style, good music, some very tense scenes that didn’t quite go anywhere. Honestly there was just a kernel of a good movie in here and it happens that it’s that jerk kernel that just won’t pop in the pan. People that don’t like body horror won’t enjoy this. Sadly, people that do like body horror also won’t really enjoy this. It wasn’t a waste of my time, but it’s unrecommendable.
6/10