Film Review: Ready or Not 2

too clever by half, and in the end not clever enough

I think this is the official poster. Fair use yadda yadda go ahead and sue me.

Edit 4/3/2026: some small clarifications.

Look, I wanted to like this movie.

It’s got most of what it needs to be a reasonably entertaining sequel to the first movie. Samara Weaving is a great horror movie actress. Alas, in order to raise the stakes, the screenwriters discarded a lot of what made the original film fun — and frankly, did some stuff that pissed me the fuck off.

Let’s start at the very beginning, shall we?

In the first movie, Ready or Not, Samara Weaving’s character (named Grace) marries into a super rich family. Old money, with weird traditions, one of which is that anyone who marries into the family has to randomly pick a “game” to play. If they pick Hide-and-Seek, they are ritually hunted and sacrificed as an offering to “Mr. Le Bail”, a demonic figure whose blessing granted this family its fortune. Anyways, through sheer bad luck Grace manages to pick the deadly sacrifice game but, fortunately, is able to outlast her pursuers, who all explode because that’s what Mr. Le Bail does to losers, and is the sole survivor of the night’s bloodbath.¹

That movie was awesome! It was self-contained, ended with a great one-liner, and told a complete story. There was no need to tack on a sequel.

Alas, money is everything. A sequel was recently made.

In Ready or Not 2, it turns out literally all of that was for nothing. It’s not just one snobbish old family who’s cut deals with Mr. Le Bail, it’s several of them. Multiple, ethnically diverse families,² all of whom owe their power to Mr. Le Bail. And they literally control the world.

To establish the power that this shadowy group of families wields, we are treated to some extraordinarily clunky exposition. An old man watches a war taking place on cable news. He picks up the phone: “approve the ceasefire.” And literally seconds later, it’s announced on the TV that the war’s on pause.

They might as well just have had characters monologue their motivations directly into the camera. Actually, that sorta happens on at least one occasion. I’ve found that most people in real life don’t typically act like that. But whatever. It’s the movies.

Anyways, to establish a sequel they have to drop a bunch of exposition in order to bridge the gap between the self-contained setting of the first movie and the massively expanded setting of the second. They also, incidentally, make the events of the first movie pretty much pointless.

Having escaped the first movie, Grace is hauled back in for a second round. Turns out, the shadowy cabal that controls the world has another game for her. Because of Mr. Le Bail’s ancient bylaws, her victory from the first movie means that she gets hunted — again — this time by a representative of each of the other families, and whoever wins gets to be the head of their shadowy council. Because Mr. Le Bail said so.

Oh yeah, and Grace has a younger sister who shows up in time for this movie, too. Despite Grace not having any family in the first movie. Turns out she didn’t mention her estranged sister. Whatever. That’s the least of the quibbles here.

(I confess — I didn’t like Grace’s sister all that much. Not like I blame her for freaking out, but if you’re in a horror movie you gotta lock in. There are better times and places to work through your interpersonal conflict regarding how your older sister fled town at 18 without taking you with her. I know, I know, it’s a movie, and they do work through things eventually. But c’mon. Her sister seemingly exists solely to repeatedly pick a fight at the worst possible times.³)

Where was I? Oh, right. Shadowy cabal, multiple families, and this whole outfit — the satanic worshipers of Mr. Le Bail — controls the world. See, for example, the earlier example, where the previous head of the council (who lost his seat upon Grace wiping out that one family in the first movie) is able to stop a war within seconds with a single phone call. There’s also a nameless lawyer played by Elijah Wood, a possibly supernatural representative of Mr. Le Bail who explains the rules to everyone (and to the audience; more exposition, yay).

There’s some funny dialogue. There are some entertaining scenes. There is plenty of spectacle — once you get past the initial stuttering start.

And yet I couldn’t quite enjoy this movie. Well, okay, after the beginning clumsiness, I was getting kinda into it, despite various worldbuilding issues. But then I noticed something which had honestly evaded my notice during the first movie.

These cultists have a bunch of weird chants they do. Most of it is in English (“Hail Satan!”). There’s a smattering of Latin that I recall, very briefly (because Latin is the language of spells). But one refrain is chanted more often than anything else: “Shemhamforash.”

Let’s put this all together. In Ready or Not 2, we are introduced to a globe-spanning cabal — whose members include families from India, China, Spain, and so forth. They perform rituals of demonic inspiration in service to a Mr. Le Bail. These rituals involve extensive bloodshed and sacrifice, a dark parody of familiar religious services. This cabal, it is made abundantly clear, controls the media and the police and probably the banks, too, for all we know. And Elijah Wood’s character, the emissary of Mr. Le Bail, the guy who for all intents and purposes runs the show? He’s a fucking lawyer.

Are you seeing what I’m seeing?

Maybe these guys are just, like, super edgy LaVeyan Satanists. But “Shemhamforash” is not exactly elementary Hebrew. It’s a concept primarily associated with the study of kabbalah. Put it all together with the above “coincidences” and this feels targeted.

What a damn mess.

From the Wikipedia infobox. These men are responsible. Incidentally, James Vanderbilt is the guy I was dunking on during my review of the film Nuremberg, which he wrote, directed, and produced.

Gosh, it would sure be nice if we had advocacy groups dedicated to opposing antisemitism in society. Unfortunately, they seem to be a bit distracted at the moment doing such productive things as harassing college students and demanding the Wikipedia community accept articles published by the Anti-Defamation League as reliable sources.

Maybe I’m being too hard on Messers Bettinelli-Olpin, Gillett, Busick, Murphy, Vinson, Vanderbilt, Sherak, and Fischer. I doubt they set out to intentionally produce the most antisemitic movie I’ve seen that wasn’t in the German language. Remember Hanlon’s razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” I don’t know if that’s better or worse.

Maybe they were just riding the wave of popular culture — cashing in on the whole Epstein thing, making a movie about shadowy figures who control things behind the scenes, who literally get away with murder solely for the thrill of it all. Except, of course, that as we all know reality does not always make for an entertaining story. We’ve gotta punch it up for public consumption. So they threw in a few extra details, and then a few more. And by sheer coincidence, all these fun details they added turned out to be antisemitic canards.

No, I don’t think I quite believe that, either.

1. I don’t consider this a spoiler because the first movie came out seven years ago and also they made a fucking sequel, of course she survived the first movie.

2. There’s a Chinese family, an Indian(-American?) family, a Spanish family, another WASPy American family, and a family whose sole known member is a coked-up white guy from New Jersey (if I recall correctly). None of them are black, though.

3. This is realistic insofar as when you’re hurting over something, it doesn’t get resolved all at once. Life doesn’t work like that. People who are hurting will return to their wound again and again and again. Believe me, I understand. But this is a movie. Moviegoers can forgive evil if it’s entertaining. It’s harder to forgive a character who’s just being annoying.