Ready or Not (2019)

Ready or Not is dark satire more than horror. It's premise is ridiculous, a rich family plays a deadly game of hide and seek on the night their youngest son is married as part of a satanic ritual. But this is just the gimmick to get at the real moral of the story, that being wealthy is a bit of a devil's bargain and there may not be a moral way to be rich.

The film sticks to its premise fairly simply which is its strength. it doesn't try to flesh out to much, just giving us enough of the basics to get us through it story without getting bogged down in distractions. However it never quite makes its plot believable enough. Maybe with a plot like this that is asking too much. But the film doesn't feel like it's trying to be real, instead it knows its a morality play, a satirical look at the evils justifying any bad behavior in the name of securing wealth. So instead the film just runs with it and in that it makes for a rather entertaining time.

Film makers Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett use sepia tones and warm lighting to give the film an elegance which they quickly disrupt with the evil of the family. Their message isn't a subtle one but it is cogent. The direct link is made between earning wealth by engaging evil and maintaining it by sacrificing the poor. It is clever satire if not nuanced, and as the film continues they embrace more and more absurdity until the audience is laughing, uncomfortably, with the film.

Ready or Not probably could have been a stronger film and even darker but for what it delivers it is surprisingly cohesive within all its absurdity. One has to take it with a bit of salt but don't underestimate its relevance.

Ready or Not
Starring: Samara Weaving, Adam Brody, Andie McDowell, Mark O'Brien, Henry Czerny, Nat Faxon
Directors: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett
Writers: Guy Busick, R Christopher Murphy