READY OR NOT 2 : HERE I COME - Tuesday 31st March 2026

I saw the MA15+ Rated 'READY OR NOT 2 : HERE I COME' at my local multiplex this week, and this American comedy horror film serves as a direct sequel to 2019's 'Ready or Not' and is once again Directed by Matt Bittinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett. The first film collected US$58M at the Box Office from a US$6M production budget and garnered positive critical reviews. This film saw its Premiere at the SXSW Film & TV Festival in mid-March before its release Stateside and here in Australia two weeks ago. It has generated positive critical press, and has so far collected US$25M at the worldwide Box Office from a production budget of US$14M.

The film follows on immediately following where the first film left off, with Grace MacCaullay (Samara Weaving) collapsing directly out the front of the burning Le Domas mansion on the steps, still wearing her very bloodied wedding gown. She lights up a cigarette, as Police and emergency services sirens are heard approaching, and then promptly falls unconscious from exhaustion and her wounds endured during the previous evenings game of Hide and Seek. She is taken by ambulance to hospital, where she later that day comes round handcuffed to her bed, with Police Detective Bassett (Grant Nickalls) standing over her. 

Into the room walks Grace's estranged younger sister Faith (Kathryn Newton) whom she has not spoken to since she left for college, some seven years previously. Faith is still registered on Grace's phone as the person to contact in the event of an emergency, hence her appearance. Bassett tells her that she needs to accompany him to the Police Station for questioning as she is the prime suspect in the murder investigation of two people whose corpses were recovered from the building, and the blood on her dress is not her own. 

In the meantime, the Council, an order of six elite families are notified of the Le Domas' demises and prepare to unite at the Danforth estate for another game. The head members include twin siblings Ursula (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Titus (Shawn Hatosy) Danforth, Wan Chen Xing (Olivia Cheng), Viraj Rajan (Nadeem Umar-Khitab), Ignacio El Caido (Nestor Carbonell), and Bill Wilkinson (Kevin Durand). Prior to their arrival at the Danforth estate, Ursula and Titus kill their elderly father Chester (David Cronenberg), the current 'High Seat' of the Council, by suffocating him with a pillow, so they can enter the game simultaneously. Chester's last duty before his death was to text a message to the remaining families that 'the game is in play'. Bill attempts to kill Grace at the hospital, but he and the Wilkinsons explode in a shower of blood because they failed to wait for the game's official commencement at 2:31pm that afternoon.

Grace and Faith are gassed as they try to make their escape from the hospital, and come round bound and gagged at the Danforth estate while Le Bail's representative, the 'Lawyer' (Elijah Wood), explains their new found situation, which due to Grace's victory at the Le Domas' hide and seek game, the four remaining families must kill her before dawn to acquire the High Seat, and a ring with seemingly infinite worldwide power will be provided to the winner. The players are not allowed to kill each other, and their deaths allow the next eldest member of their family to enter the game. Grace initially refuses to take part, but agrees when Faith's life is threatened with a knife to the throat. The pair are then drugged, as the eldest members each in turn sign a blood oath and the next game commences at the allotted time.

The sisters are handcuffed together and put on a golf course, on hole 9. After evading attempts from different families, they manage to kill Viraj in an industrial sized washing machine sending him spinning round and round at high speed in very hot water, so that his skin melted. Wan Chen Xing finds them and reveals a loophole, whereby if Grace marries one of the elite's family members, the game immediately ceases, granting her husband the High Seat and allowing her to live. Grace refuses as it would mean selling her soul to the Devil. Ignacio interrupts them, and Chen Xing unintentionally kills him with a Japanese katana sword. The Wans explode into blood as Ignacio's daughter and Alex Le Domas' ex-fiancee Francesca (Maia Jae) prepares to enter the game. Faith berates Grace's refusal of the opportunity of marriage.

Viraj's death allows his brother Madhu (Varun Saranga) to enter the game, but he cowardly forfeits head status to his wife Martina (Masa Lizdek) signing over all of his worldly possessions to her. Instead of playing, she drives off from the hunt at speed destroying the front gate in the process. Madhu then relents and says he's ready to enter the game, but alas says the Lawyer, its too late and that he has nothing, zip, diddly squat possessions to his name, and as his wife still lives there is absolutely nothing that can be done. Ursula nearly kills Grace with a foot long metal spike right through her shoulder and is about to cut her throat with a blade as Faith saves her and the pair flee. Grace lambasts Faith's return and wishes they had never reunited, resulting in a downtrodden Faith to leave. Titus attacks Faith, beats her up and is about to kill her when Ursula intervenes and says she's better use to them alive than dead. They take her hostage while Francesca targets Grace, though Grace acquires a shotgun from the Guardhouse and kills her. Through an intercom, Titus taunts Grace and forces her to the main lounge where Faith is being held captive.

Grace storms into the lounge blasting away with her shotgun, until she runs out of cartridges. She locks herself in a walk-in coolroom in the kitchen, but is cornered by the surviving players. Using Chen Xing's previously advised loophole, Grace suggests she marries Titus to ensure her and Faith's safety, handing over the High Seat to the Danforths and concluding the game despite Faith begging her not to. Both Grace and Faith are washed, cleaned up and their injuries attended to by a group of maids, after which Ursula privately warns Grace about Titus' psychopathy and her fears of what could develop under his worldwide order. Ursula suggests that she and Grace work together to control Titus after the marriage. Titus, having overheard, kills Ursula by strangulation, as there is no rule against killing family members. At an underground cavernous altar, the marriage ceremony begins before a crowd of Satanic cult members and presided over by the Lawyer. 

After they sign their intertwined familial blood pacts, Grace stabs Titus with a fountain pen repeatedly in the neck, and Faith then kicks him into an open circular pit full of the skeletons of sacrificed human and animal bodies, killing him. Now with rightful ownership of the High Seat, Grace announces everyone in attendance to kneel, and they obligingly do so. She then further states her removal from the organisation and throws the ring into the pit. Since the High Seat now belongs to whoever is wearing the ring at dawn, which is just three minutes away before the sun rises, the wedding guests all jump headlong into the pit for a chance at locating the ring, murdering one another as they do. As Grace and Faith look on at the melee unfolding before them, no one succeeds before dawn and the entire Council erupts in a torrential explosion of blood and guts covering the recently cleaned up pair. As they turn to leave, Le Bail's spirit briefly appears behind the alter, and nods to both Grace and Faith as they are finally free. The sisters walk out of the premises holding hands at the beginning of a brand new day, and Grace promises never to leave Faith again.

'Ready or Not 2 : Here I Come' is a fun and entertaining enough follow up to 2019's sleeper hit, but I'm not sure that I'd describe it as a comedy horror offering as the jump scares and frightening scenes are very thin on the ground, and by very thin I mean non-existent! That said, the film ramps up the bloodletting, the creative kills, the emotion, the chaos and the dark humour which is no bad thing, and the chemistry between Weaving and Newton as estranged sisters brought back together under very trying circumstances, works a treat. Once again it's good to see two working class girls rise to the challenge of dispensing with the controlling elitist hierarchy of this world, as their individual and collective demise is meted out in interesting and inventive ways, courtesy of their grit, determination and sisterly bond, unlike the antagonists who just want to play a high stakes game of cat and mouse. It's a worthy follow-up, but I'm not sure there's much room left in this universe for 'Ready or Not 3'!

'Ready or Not 2 : Here I Come' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a potential five claps. 

    

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

ANT-MAN AND THE WASP : QUANTUMANIA - Tuesday 21st February 2023.

I saw 'ANT-MAN AND THE WASP : QUANTUMANIA' this week, and this M-Rated American superhero film is based on the Marvel Comics characters of Scott Lang (aka Ant-Man) and Hope van Dyne (aka The Wasp) and is the direct sequel to 2015's 'Ant-Man' and 2018's 'Ant-Man and The Wasp', is the 31st entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the lunching film of Phase Five of the MCU. As with the two previous films, Peyton Reed returns as Director for this third instalment. The film saw its Premier screening in Los Angeles on the 6th February, before its worldwide release last week, having gained mixed Reviews from critics, although it has so far earned US$288M off the back of a production budget of US$200M, making it the third highest grossing film of 2023 so far. 

The film begins with the back story of Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) trapped for some thirty years in the Quantum Realm, where one day she encounters Kang (Jonathan Majors) an exiled traveller who crash lands his craft, and who explains that they can both escape from the Realm if she helps him repair the Multiversal Power Core that is necessary for him to leave and for Janet to return to Earth to be reunited with her daughter. After many attempts to repair it have failed they one day have success but as Janet plugs in the power core she sees a vision of Kang conquering and destroying entire timelines. Kang reveals he was exiled by his own variants out of fear, which leads Janet to turn on him. Outmatched, Janet uses her Pym Particles to enlarge the Power Core and therefore render it useless.

Back in the present day and following the Battle of Earth, Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) has become a successful memoirist having penned a best selling autobiography titled 'Look Out For The Little Guy' which charts his adventures with The Avengers, and has been living happily with his girlfriend, Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly). Scott's now-teenage daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) has become a political activist, resulting in her doing jail time before being bailed out by her father. While visiting Hope's parents, Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Janet, Cassie reveals that she has been working on a mechanism that can establish a link to the Quantum Realm. 

When demonstrating how the device works, Janet panics and shuts it down, but contact had already been established so opening up a portal which sucks Janet, Hank, Cassie, Hope and Scott down into the Quantum Realm. Scott and Cassie land together and are found by natives who are rebelling against their ruler, while Hope, Janet, and Hank land in close proximity elsewhere and set off to a sprawling city to find Scott and Cassie. 

Hope, Janet, and Hank meet with Lord Krylar (Bill Murray), a former close friend of Janet's, who explains that things have changed since she left, and that he now answers to Kang, who is now the Realm's ruler. The three are forced to flee and steal Krylar's ship. The Langs, meanwhile, are told by rebel leader Jentorra (Katy O'Brian) that Janet's involvement with Kang is indirectly responsible for his rise to power. The rebels soon come under attack by Kang's forces led by M.O.D.O.K. (Mechanised Organism Designed Only for Killing), who is revealed to be Darren Cross (Corey Stoll), having survived his apparent death at Scott's hands when he was unevenly shrunken to subatomic size in the Quantum Realm and became a mutated, cybernetically enhanced individual with an oversized head. 

Scott and Cassie are taken to Kang, who has them detained in cells. He demands that Scott helps get his power core back and restore it to its normal workable size or else he will kill Cassie. Scott is taken to the core's location and shrinks down. Once inside he is overwhelmed by a mass of variants of himself, but Hope arrives and helps him gain the power core and using several Pym Particles reduces it in size. Kang, surprise surprise, reneges on his deal with Scott, and captures Janet and destroys her ship with Hank on it. 

After being rescued by his ants, who were also pulled into the Quantum Realm, they evolved rapidly, and became hyper-intelligent, Hank helps Scott and Hope as they make their way to Kang, aided in vast numbers by an army of ants, and Scott who has grown to an enormous size that he towers over Kang's domain. Cassie rescues Jentorra and they begin an offensive uprising against Kang and his army. During the fight, Cassie convinces Cross to turn sides and fight Kang, though he sacrifices his own life in the process.

Janet is able to fix the power core as she, Hank, Hope, and Cassie jump through a portal home, but Kang appears before Scott is able to make the jump and attacks him nearly beating him into submission. Hope returns and, together with Scott, destroy the power core and knock Kang into it, causing him to be pulled into oblivion. Cassie reopens the portal at her end for Scott and Hope to return home. As Scott happily resumes his life, he begins to rethink what he was told about Kang's death being the start of something terrible happening, but quickly dismisses the notion as he joins the family to celebrate Cassie's unbirthday at a restaurant, making up for all her birthday's that Scott missed. Remember to remain in your seat for the customary mid-credits and end credits sequences. 

'Ant-Man and The Wasp : Quantumania' is everything you have come to expect from a big budget, big spectacle MCU offering, with its heavy handed use of CGI to build a world and all the fantastical creatures and structures contained within it, to its use of A-list acting talent to give the film gravitas, to the introduction of a new cosmic villain that we are likely to see across multiple MCU films into the future in Kang the Conqueror all wrapped up with Scott Lang's quirky and not too serious take on his world and his new found place as an Avenger. All of that said, there is so much seemingly endless spectacle on screen here, that at times it's difficult to keep track of exactly what is going on. The story is also pedestrian and predictable and the plot is thin on the ground and seems to serve no other purpose than to introduce us to a new super villain and establish the next phase of the MCU. However, at a lean 123 minutes running time it doesn't outstay its welcome.

'Ant-Man and The Wasp : Quantumania' merits three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-