Ready or Not

Spoiler-free!

Don't make pacts with the devil for success and riches, kids. If you do, it will only end one way: with laughter and splashing blood. The laughter won't be yours, but the blood probably will be.

It sure does make for entertaining fiction, though!

The Le Domas family did make a pact with the devil for riches. Specifically, a game empire. As part of the deal, anyone who marries into the family must draw a magic card and play the game written there. But if they happen to draw the game Hide and Seek, they have been chosen to be a sacrifice and must be killed before dawn. That's what happens to Grace (Samara Weaving) when she marries Alex (Mark O'Brien). And she's not happy about it.

When a movie has a premise this good, it seems a terrible waste of it all to make the ultimate point simply that, "Rich people are crazy." Make a movie -- any movie -- in which a rich family worships Satan and sacrifices their in-laws to him and you'll get that point across. About the third time you reiterate it, I'm going to start wishing you had something more to say. This movie does a great job defining its villains, showing their motivation and the depths of their selfish, evil ways. But it doesn't balance all that with equal amounts of good.

Only one character does something selfless in this movie, and it's not the lead.

Grace is a solid heroine and easy to root for simply because she is over her head and fighting to survive in a wild situation. She's also scrappy and unrefined, details that I liked. A solid character. In a great dress! But she only ever protects herself. She lets others sacrifice for her instead of risking herself for anyone, and doesn't quite come into full hero status before the film ends. I can only suppose the end intended to be spiteful; there was a clear and far more satisfying path there that was ignored in order to stubbornly eek out the desired result.

So it's unfulfilled, but as I said, the premise is strong. Strong enough to carry the movie well into the third act before you realize it has strayed from the mark. It could have been funnier throughout as some of the jokes were a little cheap. The good humor came from a sharp wit and I could have done with ten times more of that. But the tone struck was fitting; with high drama and high energy, but not too flippant as horror-comedies are so often in danger of being. I mostly wish it hadn't fallen back on the old "saying the f-word makes it funny" trope.

Its swearing comes across like a kid trying to be edgy.

The premise could have gone off in any number of narrative directions, and though I don't think they chose the best route, I also think they were very far from the worst. I was always engaged with the action though it wasn't exceptional in either concept or execution. And several of the characters had great arcs, or little backstory tidbits that brought depth to the story. It was the attention to character early on that made the conclusion feel so incomplete later.

I don't think it was due to my already being a fan of Adam Brody that made Daniel my favorite. He hit the movie's dark wit most consistently and took the best character direction. I also liked the direction Alex took; and Andie MacDowell's mom character. Then quirk characters like the hyper sister or grumpy aunt worked great to keep all the characters straight and keep the humor going. And like I said the lead was super solid; the thing about this movie that lingers in the mind once it's over. Even though she shoulders much of the film's flaws, she takes it all like a champ.

It reminded me at times of The Cabin in the Woods, and I wish they'd gone even further in that direction.

Not up to the standard of its greatest peers, but no slouch either, Ready or Not is a mixed bag that doesn't jive with its either/or, black and white title. Neither a winner nor a loser; but at least genre fans can be happy the game was played.