Ready or Not 2: Here I Come review – comedy horror sequel goes big and you should stay home

There’s even more screaming, running, swearing and exploding rich people in a follow-up to the 2019 sleeper hit that expands mythology we didn’t need expanded

To give 2019’s grating comedy horror Ready or Not some reluctant credit, it did arrive before Trump-era eat-the-rich became an entire, increasingly exhausting subgenre in itself. The film, about a woman finding out her new husband’s wealthy family members are game-playing devil-worshippers, was clearly indebted to/inspired by Get Out, but it landed before The Menu, Blink Twice, Triangle of Sadness, The Hunt, Knives Out, Infinity Pool, Opus and the many, many others, a medal for speed if not much else.

The follow-up has then taken a surprising amount of time, mostly due to the team behind it (directing duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett) being busy with the rebooted Scream franchise as well as toothless vampire dud Abigail, but also one imagines because of the difficulties in extending a film in which everyone, bar final girl, had spontaneously combusted at the end. In a world where both horror and superhero franchises have increasingly started to resemble daytime soaps in their absurd, no-rules-apply plotting (not dead, all a dream, different universe, etc), Ready or Not 2: Here I Come was still inevitable regardless of logic. What’s odd given the seven-year gap is that the second film takes place directly after the first, a la Halloween II, with heroine Grace, played by Samara Weaving, looking noticeably, understandably different.