Guest Post: Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (2026)

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come -  Most Dangerous Game Night

By Jonas Schwartz-Owen

 

In other hands, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come could’ve been a wasted experience: the premise rhymes a little too closely with the original, our heroine occasionally feels like she’s lost a few hard-won survival points since movie one, and there are only so many ways to run a chase-and-capture story - where the villains hold all the money, guns, and institutions - without snapping the audience’s suspension of disbelief in half. Thankfully, returning directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (who also took the wheel for Scream (2022) and Scream VI) walk you down a familiar path… then flip the carriage, set it on fire, and leave everyone dazed, confused, and delighted.

Picking up in the immediate aftermath of the first film, we find Grace (Samara Weaving) punch-drunk, half-feral, and very much not enjoying the post-wedding glow - unless you count the kind of glow that comes from a mansion exploding behind you. She wakes in a hospital, handcuffed to the bed, blamed for the very messy pile of Le Domas bodies left behind (or at least the ones that were still recognizable as bodies). Her emergency contact is her estranged sister, Faith (Kathryn Newton), who shows up with the enthusiasm of someone asked to help you move on a weekend… after you “moved” to New York and basically vanished years ago.

But Grace’s victory lap is premature. The game she survived wasn’t the end of anything - it was an audition. What started as one cursed family’s tradition has metastasized into an international sport for the obscenely wealthy: a “Most Dangerous Game” tournament where various one-percent dynasties compete for the ultimate prize - status, power, bragging rights, and (because these people are monsters) the sisters’ dead bodies as the trophy. Among the contenders is the Danforth patriarch (director David Cronenberg, radiating cold-blooded menace) and his twin heirs: Titus (Shawn Hatosy) and Ursula (Sarah Michelle Gellar, yes, Buffy the FRIGGIN’ Vampire Slayer herself). May the worst family win.

Like the first film, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett paint with thick, gleeful brushstrokes - a live-action cartoon in the Wile E. Coyote tradition, if Acme also sold ritual daggers and private security. The gore is grotesque but consistently funny, and sometimes it’s not the successful kills but the spectacularly abortive attempts that land hardest, including a botched rocket launcher and a bout of fisticuffs while everyone’s essentially high on pepper spray.

The script - again from original scribes Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy - knows exactly where you think this sequel is headed. It offers just enough familiar beats to lull you into smug prediction mode, then yanks the floor away at the moment you’re about to congratulate yourself. When it zigzags, it commits, and the new direction feels less like a gimmick and more like the movie finally showing its hand.

The directors make smart use of the whole cast, but the best upgrade is Newton, who’s been quietly building a horror-comedy résumé (Freaky, Lisa Frankenstein, Abigail) and slides into this world like she was born holding a taser. Weaving and Newton make winning heroes - scrappy enough to survive, sharp enough to adapt, and stubborn enough to turn the hunted-into-hunter switch the second an opening appears. Their chemistry sells the messy, believable way estranged sisters can go from “we don’t talk” to “I will absolutely set a billionaire on fire for you.”

Gellar - on the wrong side of morality this time - clearly has a blast as the twin who got the brains in the womb, and she plays Ursula with the kind of polished cruelty that probably comes with a private tennis court. But the real standout villain is Shawn Hatosy’s Titus: all flippancy, ignorance, and entitlement, delivered with the oily confidence of someone who’s never once faced a consequence he couldn’t pay to delete. He’s basically a walking comment section - one of those billionaire manchildren you see in the news saying something defiant and wildly uninformed, then acting stunned when the public doesn’t applaud.

Not since Uma Thurman’s blood-stained Bride has anyone in a white gown weaponized matrimony with this much style. Ready or Not 2: Here I Come understands the secret sauce of the original: let the rich be ridiculous, let the violence be inventive, and let the heroine earn every inch of her fury. It’s a sequel that could’ve coasted on brand recognition and bridal trauma, but instead levels up the satire, the set pieces, and the sisterhood at its center. By the time the credits roll, you’re not just cheering because Grace (and Faith) lived - you’re cheering because, for once, the “family values” crowd gets exactly what they deserve. Family is everything… especially when you’re the kind of family willing to burn the whole rotten dynasty down.