Ready or Not: A Raw Stroke of Creativity

Ready or Not takes the equal parts amusing and uncomfortable sigh... in-laws conversation, turns it into a feature-length film, and points it in such a terribly preposterous direction that at times, it behaves like a witty, foul-mouthed expansion pack for Clue. It's not a perfect movie, with two forgettable lead performances that lack both depth and charisma. Still, I have to shower writer Guy Busick and co-directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett with praise for delivering a movie that presents a possibility so simple yet so carelessly preposterous that it's genius. I won't lie to you; I strongly desire to marry one day. Here's to hoping that her family isn't the type to hunt the significant others of their children for sport on the wedding night, because that's precisely what Ready or Not is about. Grace has just married into the extravagantly wealthy Le Domas family, but before she and her new groom, Alex, can call it official, Grace is invited to a mysterious game night where she's obligated to draw a card from a stack full of them, each card representing a different game. Predictably enough, she draws the hide-and-seek card. The catch is that once she does, the Le Domas family turns from a collection of uncomfortably sweet and strangely grumpy in-laws into a Victorian pack of rabid, empathy-less animals with many types of weapons, but only one goal: to kill Grace before the sun rises. Minus the killing, this movie took the five-year-old in me back to the good old days of playing hide-and-seek with friends; it also taught him a few new words, too.

Ready or Not has the sensibilities and creativity of a good student film, but the technical proficiency of a multi-million-dollar Hollywood project: you've never quite seen anything like this before. The Le Domas mansion is a crescendo of old-fashioned production design that realizes a triumph of a playground for Grace and her new in-laws to play in, converse in, eat in, and kill each other in. To put a portrait on the wall of your mind, think of this movie as the R-rated spin-off of Knives Out that never was. The mansion appears relatively traditional, but its trappings are eccentric and extravagant; everything is remarkably detailed, and it's evident that no expense was spared concerning production design. Ready or Not plays the part of a rich man who can get away with anything, and it looks the part, too.

Hide and seek is all about not being seen, and Ready or Not took this idea to heart before transferring it to the ears; the sounds in this movie are terrifyingly precise. Every tiny noise Grace made sounded like an avalanche, and every time a floorboard creaked under her foot or a door closed a little too loudly, I caught myself waiting with bated breath for one of the Le Domases to burst into the room she'd chosen to hide in to capture her or shoot her or do some other sort of terrible thing to her. For as far-fetched as the premise of this movie is, its sound design is only the bloody icing on a cake of violence baked with immaculate confidence and skill. Ready or Not is interesting, intelligent, and macabre in its own right. It's also a movie with a big twist that caught me firmly off guard in its fundamental simplicity, and I think it will surprise you, too. This movie does not always go the way you expect it to, and for a story that's one big game of hide-and-seek, that's a blessed trait to have.

Still, not everything about Ready or Not clicks for me, and the biggest bone I have to pick with it is the hollow hole at the center of its fun-loving and gleefully violent heart where a main character's presence should be. Both Alex and Grace, though impeccably well-acted, are left virtually unexplored as characters, and I never particularly cared about what happened to them because the movie never bothered to treat them as anything more than plot devices. I didn't learn anything about their lives outside of the fact that they're getting married and pulling out all the stops in an effort to survive Alex's crazy family. This movie is crazy, creative, and a blast to watch, but it lacks a soul. One could compare watching it to the cinematic equivalent of a one-night stand. Still, it's a shocking night of terror and laughter in an extravagantly beautiful home. Who said that hide and seek needed to be deep? What I didn't know is that it could also be as uniquely terrifying as this.

Ready or Not - 7/10

Ecclesiastes 4:9-10