While not a necessary element of horror cinema, social commentary is such a solid match for the genre that the better films usually find room for it somewhere. Ready or Not, a campy exercise in which a bride is hunted for sport by her new in-laws, certainly digs hard into the idea. While ‘the rich prosper at the expense of the poor’ is essentially low-hanging fruit – I suspect most of us know most wealthy people are monsters – it is always a crowd-pleasing background for some violent, bloody satire.
Grace (Samara Weaving) is overjoyed to marry her new husband Alex (Mark O’Brien), but feels nervous about fitting into his enormously rich family – owners of a century-old board gaming empire. When family tradition demands she plays a randomly chosen game on her wedding, Grace is keen to fit in. When it turns out to be hide and seek – and her new family come armed with shotguns and crossbows – Grace is forced to run for her life.
An ill-advised prologue does mishandle the set-up in many ways, but once the story proper finds its feet this is an entertaining back-and-forth blend of horror and comedy. In all honesty it is much stronger when aiming for bleak, inappropriate laughs (a running joke involving coked-up sister-in-law Emilie (Melanie Scrofano) is superb), but even the more tense scenes carry a bold, archetypal entertainment value. The film’s antecedents are numerous, including the likes of Saw, The Purge, You’re Next, and The People Under the Stairs, but directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett embrace their roots and deliver an openly-declared pastiche. It is, all in all, enormous fun.
The material has been lifted to an extent by a solidly talented cast. Samara Weaving (Bill & Ted Face the Music) demonstrates some impressive star power, with a good comic delivery and a strong screen presence. Hunting her down is genuinely impressive talent including Henry Czerny (Mission: Impossible) and Andie MacDowell (Groundhog Day, et al), each of whom digs hard into their characters’ comedic value. The whole films leans into its own absurdity, which seems a winning strategy. There is even a nicely ambiguous back story that leaves the viewer guessing over whether not there is a supernatural element at play; the film actively juggles the possibility right the way through to its final moments.
Yes there is violence and some bloody moments, but altogether the gore is fairly well off-set by the humour. In that regard it is a more palatable and mainstream experience than a lot of horror cinema over the past two decades, and a touch more likely to secure a legion of happy fans. It was released theatrically in 2019 by Fox Searchlight – hardly the most genre-savvy of distributors – and while profitable in cinemas still feels a little under-exposed. It lies on home video and streaming (Disney+ in Australia) for fresh audiences to tap into its charms.
Saw it in the cinema in the before times and loved it. Samara Weaving is also the best thing about The Babysitter on Netflix. I hope she has a long career ahead of her.