Ready Or Not starts at a terrific pace — a Steadicam-shot chase through the corridors of a spooky mansion — and doesn’t let up. The latest from Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, two-thirds of the filmmaking group Radio Silence best known for the first-person horror segment of V/H/S, mashes up Clue and The Most Dangerous Game and infuses it with dark, nutty energy, gore (the loopy rather than repulsive kind), smart laughs and sharp satire at the expense of America’s well-to-do. Gaining much of its cojones from a star-making turn by Samara Weaving (niece of Hugo), it’s a comedy-horror-thriller that manages to perfectly juggle its constituent genres effortlessly.
The set-up is delicious in its absurdity. Grace (Weaving), an orphan brought up in foster homes, is marrying Alex (O’Brien) and into the wealthy Le Domas family, whose fortune has been made in board games. On her wedding night she has to take part in a bizarre ritual: every time someone new joins the family, they partake in a midnight game mechanically selected from a scary antique box. If not thrilled by the prospect, Grace plays along when the card selected is ‘hide and seek’. What she doesn’t realise is that she is now the prey for the rest of the family to hunt and kill by sunrise or they will all perish.
What follows is a tight, taut 95-minute blast. Gillett and Bettinelli-Olpin drag Grace through the mill, embroidering each mini set-piece with unusual elements (a dumb waiter, a teapot, Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture) and jet-black humour. Red herrings are dangled, hoary genre staples (the handy getaway car trope) are subverted. There’s bloodletting, both intentional and unintentional, and the film revels in the heavily designed gothic mansion, Gillett and Bettinelli-Olpin deftly managing to build variety and momentum within a single location. They are helped by Brett Jutkiewicz’s restless camera and Brian Tyler’s propulsive score, all driving rhythms and scratchy violins, that pushes the action forward without ever sacrificing the gothic-y mood.
Within the mêlée, Gillett and Bettinelli-Olpin allow just enough time to sketch the personalities and dynamics of the crazy clan: frenzied patriarch (Czerny), a stern matriarch (MacDowell), a good-hearted son (Brody), a poisonous aunt (Nicky Guadagni), an ineffectual brother (Kristian Bruun) and a hilarious coked-up sister (Melanie Scrofano). But this is Weaving’s film, the perfect audience surrogate for the wild goose. Even before the game’s afoot, she is a sparky, engaging presence and as the fight back begins, she perfectly encapsulates the film’s nimble toggling between comedy and intensity. Dressed in a tattered wedding dress, plimsolls and a bandolier, Grace is a horror-icon-in-waiting.
If the film captures something about how everybody else’s family looks weird compared to your own experience, it also exemplifies the way power and privilege pervert. “Fucking rich people,” mutters Grace at one point, and Ready Or Not underlines the sentiment in a brisk and entertaining manner. Not every gag lands, but class war has rarely been so much fun
