Coined in 2009 by TV producer and comic book writer John Rogers, “competence porn” is a sort of informal subgenre of entertainment that’s built around watching characters who are genuinely quite good at their jobs. Rogers’ own show Leverage is a primary example thereof, but fans also point at Star Trek: The Next Generation, some (but not all) Batman stories, Project Hail Mary, Ocean’s Eleven, and Fargo . There’s a peculiar satisfaction in well-depicted adequacy, which probably says something about our historical moment.
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, which is now available for streaming on Hulu, is the precise opposite of that.
This is a movie about a squadron of people who are forced to work outside their core competencies, because they do not have any. That doesn’t mean they aren’t dangerous, but it’s often not in the way that they’d like to be. In the age of the Business Idiot, there’s a sick thrill to watching the sons and daughters of privilege instantly crash and burn, and that thrill is most of what drives Ready or Not 2.
As it’s a direct sequel, it’s difficult to discuss Ready or Not 2 without disclosing parts of 2019’s Ready or Not. Some spoilers follow.
In the original Ready or Not, Grace (Samara Weaving) discovers on her wedding night that her new husband’s family owe their wealth and privilege to a demonic pact. As part of that pact, Grace is set loose on the family estate and hunted down as a human sacrifice. Grace survives. Her former in-laws don’t.
The next day, Grace wakes up in the hospital, and the local cops suspect her of multiple homicides. Worse, her estranged sister Faith (Kathryn Newton), who Grace forgot was still her emergency contact, has shown up to further escalate the situation.
The cherry on top is that Grace’s dead in-laws were part of an international coalition of influential families, all of whom are descendants of those who gained their power through Satan worship. Grace and Faith are abducted and used as the quarry in a new version of the game, where four representatives of each family (one of whom is played by Sarah Michelle Gellar in her rare evil mode, like a grown-up version of her character from Cruel Intentions) must hunt and kill Grace to attain her dead in-laws’ power.
There’s a certain John Wick-ian escalation at work here, where a sequel turns a relatively simple concept (the devil says we have to murder our new daughter-in-law) into an elaborate piece of urban fantasy myth-building (the modern world is controlled by a cadre of devil worshippers with their own elaborate legal code). It’s silly if you slow down to think about it.
Fortunately, Ready or Not 2 never does. Instead, it leans heavily into the first movie’s best joke: these people have the best of everything and suck at all of it, up to and including premeditated homicide. It’s a splatterpunk comedy of errors that’s full of crazy kills, gallons of blood, and some of the deliberately worst fights in cinematic history.
Several of the negative reviews of Ready or Not 2 accuse it of being “more of the same.” That’s reductive. The first Ready or Not is, at its core, a shaggy-dog joke about a new bride’s inability to get along with her husband’s family. To some extent, the entire movie is building up to its final line of dialogue. Ready or Not 2 is much more about the implicit issue of class war, with a couple of borderline-homeless orphans up against a who’s-who of the world’s elite, who are forced by the Devil to get their own hands dirty.
The result is one of the highest-budget drive-in movies on record, with more of everything but not so much more that it loses sight of what makes it fun. Grace and Faith are trapped in a country club, not a mansion, with more armed pursuers and somewhat higher stakes. Most importantly, Ready or Not 2 throws blood around with the glee of an old episode of You Can’t Do That on Television, with a couple of human detonations perfectly timed for maximum effect. It’s a solid, entertaining night at the movies for anyone interested in watching a few of the idle rich get thrown into a metaphorical wood chipper.
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come is now available for streaming via Hulu.
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