Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come looks like a lot of fun

In 2019 Ready Or Not, starring Samara Weaving and Adam Brody, was a sleeper hit. It’s a fun horror/genre movie with a batty premise executed well, about a bride who must survive her murderous in-laws. It’s a lot of fun.

It also now has a sequel, the excellently named Ready Or Not: Here I Come (officially there’s a “2” in the title treatment but I am ignoring it because it’s better that way).

The trailer dropped yesterday, and maybe we don’t need a sequel to Ready Or Not, which works perfectly fine as a self-contained story, but I will support this sequel because it co-stars Shawn Hatosy, and Shawn Hatosy deserves rights. I’ve said it before and I will keep saying, I like seeing Shawn Hatosy win because he’s one of the good guys, and it’s great to see him having a career resurgence with The Pitt and now snagging bigger roles in bigger movies.

But Ready Or Not: Here I Come—I love it when the title does the thing—also stars Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Sarah Michelle Gellar ALSO deserves rights. We love to see Buffy Summers thrive! She is also experiencing a career resurgence, and I really like the approach to casting in this film. It’s full of genre icons.

Because this film is also a full-on The Faculty reunion, with Elijah Wood popping up alongside his Faculty co-star, Shawn Hatosy. I do not think this is an accident. There’s a lot of genre references and homages in the first film, and the casting of the second film is in itself a meta reference to millennial genre culture. With bonus David Cronenberg! I also love it when people cast legendary directors to act in films!

So maybe we don’t “need” a sequel to Ready Or Not, but maybe we “want” one anyway, because there is definitely a Deliberate Approach here, and I am not against it. I am very for it, actually. I’m also for Samara Weaving doing more things, she’s great and I think her strong resemblance to Margot Robbie has kind of hurt her over the years (see also: Kristen Stewart/Teresa Palmer), but Weaving is super fun and so is everyone else involved in this movie.