The directing team known as Radio Silence, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, have established themselves over the years as an assured hand in the horror space. From their contribution to the 2012 anthology series V/H/S to revitalizing the Scream series with audacious entries Scream (2022) and Scream 6 (2023), bloody carnage and dark humor galore equated to a damn fine time at the movies. Their 2019 horror comedy Ready or Not is no exception, playing the real-or-not game with its audience as we followed Samara Weaving’s (Bill & Ted Face the Music; Over Your Dead Body) Grace have her wedding day turned upside down when her in-laws hunt her for sport in a ritualistic exercise. Coming back for round two, Ready or Not: Here I Come dispenses with the question of whether or not the Devil is real and throws its characters (and us) right back into ultraviolence while building an even bigger world for Grace to survive. Filled with a game cast of actors ready to slice, shoot, and explode their prey and a dual-set of protagonists played by established Scream Queens, Here I Come is a promise of bloody good times that gets delivered.
Samara Weaving as Grace MacCaullay in READY OR NOT. Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2019 Searchlight Pictures. All Rights Reserved.
If you’re unfamiliar with the original Ready or Not, head over to EoM founder Douglas Davidson’s spoiler-free theatrical release review.
Having survived her wedding night, Grace (Weaving) is treated by emergency services who arrived on-scene. However, her respite from the hunt is short-lived as no sooner has she come to in a hospital that more trouble comes for her. It seems that winning the game of Hide & Seek with the Le Domas Family has triggered a rarely used clause within Mr. Le Bail’s established contract with six elite families and now the representatives of each get a turn trying to hunt Grace. If one of them wins, they get control of everything. If she survives, well — you know. The game is on once more with new rules, new players, and, this time, Grace is accompanied by her estranged sister, Faith (Kathryn Newton), who doesn’t realize what she’s been thrown into.
Kathryn Newton as Faith MacCaullay in READY OR NOT 2: HERE I COME. Photo Credit: Searchlight Pictures/Pief Weyman, Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2026 Searchlight Pictures. All Rights Reserved.
With returning scribes Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy, Ready or Not: Here I Come (also stylized as Ready or Not 2: Here I Come) is best described as the John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017) of Ready or Not films. This is both an excellent complement and an addressment of its weakness. In the affirmative, there’s incredible consistency in the hand-off from one film to the other and not just because Here I Come starts where the first ends. The setup of the first affords this film the freedom to grow larger in a way that makes sense within the established rules. There’s no question now that what we’re seeing is supernatural in nature, thereby making everything heightened so moving the mayhem to the grounds of a hotel/casino and removing its patrons is as easily believable as a family hunting the new bride on their private estate. It’s the sort of issue that we can wave away because why couldn’t the elite afford to do whatever they want? Additionally, with the audience on-board, it means that the film can go deeper and bigger with the players, as well as the consequences, and it’s all for our enjoyment. However, much in the same way that John Wick: Chapter 2 couldn’t just start off to the races in the same way Parabellum (2019) and Chapter 4 (2023) could, but had to establish new stakes, new players, and new rules in order to fully expand the world and what that means for the returned-assassin, the same must happen here. Time must be spent to introduce this world, its characters, and why the game must be played, which, while balanced with some initial mayhem to help Faith get on-boarded in this new reality quickly, one does feel the ramp-up far more in Here I Come than in Ready or Not; though that might be linked to us knowing more than the characters do, which requires the film to allocate time to catch them up. Gratefully, once everyone is on the same page, we’re in for a blood-soaked treat.
L-R: Juan Pablo Romero as Felipe El Caído, Nestor Carbonell as Ignacio El Caído, Varun Saranga Madhu Rajan, Maša Lizdek Martina Rajan, Shawn Hatosy as Titus Danforth, Samara Weaving Grace MacCaullay, Nadeem Umar-Khitab as Viraj Rajan, Sarah Michelle Gellar as Ursula Danforth, Daniel Beirne as Kip Danforth, Kathryn Newton as Faith MacCaullay, Antony Hall as Wan Cheng Fu, and Olivia Cheng as Wan Chen Xing in READY OR NOT 2: HERE I COME. Photo Credit: Searchlight Pictures/Pief Weyman, Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2026 Searchlight Pictures. All Rights Reserved.
This is, in part, due to the stunts handled by Dan Skene (Shoresy; Violent Night) and Stephannie Hawkins (IT: Welcome to Derry; Thanksgiving) and fight coordination lead by Thomas Lorber (Frankenstein; Violent Night). Of the *several* stunt sequences and fights that make up the runtime, not a one feels either redundant or unimaginative. Much like the first film, Here I Come uses these sequences to move the story forward, to reveal something more about the characters, and not just occur for the sake of infusing some action into the character beats. This film is more character-driven than before with the need to focus on the Grace/Faith relationship, as well as that of the power vacuum and the players fighting to fill it. But rather than feel like a distraction, each sequence that inevitably pares down the competitors works toward telling us something new. The first fight sequence, for instance, informs us just how seriously one should take Mr. Le Bail’s rules, while the last showcases the importance and joy of malicious compliance. Between them are the kinds of sequences that revel in that fact that not a single person on either side really knows what the fuck they’re doing and some are better at improvising than others. See: perpetual screw-up Emilie Le Domas-Bradley (Melanie Scrofano) from Ready or Not or Madhu Rajan (Varun Saranga) in Here I Come. This makes the fight sequences and their accompanying stunts satisfyingly messy due to their perceived improvisation while allowing their tone to stay light amid the mayhem until someone displays aptitude mixed with cruelty — then one’s once hot blood turns ice cold.
Elijah Wood as The Lawyer in READY OR NOT 2: HERE I COME. Photo Credit: Searchlight Pictures/Pief Weyman, Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2026 Searchlight Pictures. All Rights Reserved.
Thanks to the infusion of new combatants, Here I Come maintains a sense of freshness when it would otherwise feel like more of the same. (They are replaying Hide & Seek on a larger course, so the sense of familiarity is high.) Even as the script continues that sense of “too familiar” in the way that Grace and Faith bicker as a means of creating both character distractions during heightened circumstances and providing extra danger for Grace as she now has someone to worry about other than herself, the performances from Weaving and Newton keep audiences coming back. Both have worked in a variety of genres, but horror heads know that Weaving (The Babysitter films; Mayhem; Guns Akimbo) and Newton (Freaky; Supernatural; Lisa Frankenstein; Abigail) are incredibly dependable, able to play fierce and vulnerable, caustic and caring — whatever the script calls for — while kicking a lot of ass. Audiences also get to delight in the opposition, a truly motley crew including horror legends Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Scream 2; I Know What You Did Last Summer), Shawn Hatosy (The Faculty; Alpha Dog), Elijah Wood (The Toxic Avenger; Sin City; I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore), and, of course, *the* David Cronenberg (The Fly; Videodrome; Dead Ringers). Cronenberg and Wood don’t get their hands dirty like the rest, but Gellar and Hatosy as the Danforth Twins not only do, the pair make for an interesting power dynamic compared to that of Daniel and Alex Le Domas (Adam Brody and Mark O’Brien) in that both want to participate in this challenge (both have been preparing since their youth for such an event) and that their ability to work together is what determines their success or failure. This is a far cry from Daniel’s passive participation in the prior hunt and Alex’s assistance-turned-betrayal to Grace. Here, however, Geller and Hatosy get to bear their claws and get nasty, leaving more of the comedic moments to the competitors of the other families. By the by, Buffy fans will get a chuckle when a version of Mr. Pointy appears (as teased in the trailer).
L-R: Samara Weaving as Grace MacCaullay and Kathryn Newton as Faith MacCaullay Faith in READY OR NOT 2: HERE I COME. Photo Credit: Searchlight Pictures/Pief Weyman, Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2026 Searchlight Pictures. All Rights Reserved.
Even with the way that Here I Come naturally continues the story freshly laid in Ready or Not, even with the new blood, and even with the amusing way that Le Bail is characterized in his appreciation of Grace, Here I Come still struggles to set itself apart from its predecessor. There’s a fine line for sequels between giving audiences something new and something familiar. Go too far one way, you can lose them entirely; go too far the other, it’s dull repetition. The fun is still here and is, perhaps, at its best through Weaving’s performance of Grace whose reluctance to sell her soul (proverbially or not) not only makes the audience constantly root for her, but has them delight so much in her ability to thrive by adhering to the rules so literally that quite anything is possible. If a third film were to be greenlight to throw the MacCaulley sisters once more into the breach, I’d be among the first to sign up to see it … but I would do so a bit more nervously as there comes a point when all games must end.
In theaters March 20th, 2026.
For more information, head to the official Searchlight Pictures Ready or Not 2: Here I Come webpage.
Final Score: 3.5 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
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