Ready Or Not (2019)

REVIEW BY: ROBERT CHANDLER

READY OR NOT is a perfect film, a blend of horror and black comedy. It’s based on a great premise - one you would greenlight if somebody pitched it to you and then hope the film-makers delivered. Well, they did. Two writers (Guy Busick and Ryan Murphy) and two directors (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett).

I think it will do for them what SAW did for James Wan and Leigh Whannell.

Samara Weaving as the bride forced to play a deadly game of hide and seek on her wedding night is excellent. She really does get put through the mill. There’s a nice touch which showed me early on that we - and the lead character - were in good hands. Weaving has to rip off the bottom from her wedding dress, pull on her baseball boots, strap a belt of elephant gun shells over her shoulder and carry a huge gun. It fetishises her and signals the emergence of the character as an icon, YET we do not get to see the whole image of her like this until she does, when she looks at herself in a full-length mirror. We have to wait. It matters that it’s a female character being treated this way and being given this respect.

Two other things need to be mentioned, important for the genre. The film was budgeted correctly (ie it did not have too much spent on it, there’s no waste, the casting was made on the basis of the actor being right) and it runs for an hour and a half... hoorah!

Also, it’s very bloody, and enormous fun. Go see it.