Ready or Not (2019): ‘Passion Projects and Misfires’ – A Film Review

Introduction

Horror appears to be making a come back! 2018 saw some fantastic additions, like A Quiet Place or Unsane to the genre; and with this, we’re starting to see more attempts surfacing here and there. We’re starting to move past the jump scare ridden horrors, that are still coming out, but with very little or even no quality whatsoever – like The Nun or Annabelle Comes Home. However, the films that follow this standard aren’t always going to hit the mark. As such, monster flicks like Crawl will also be paired with The Meg. Whilst Ready or Not is a horror film with a comedic edge, rooted in its silly concept of the board game. Leaving with it a feel somewhat akin to The Most Dangerous Game. A thing of quality or just another hash?

The Final Girl – A Style

So, the trope of the final girl sees a bit of a clever spin in the one hunted person but with many of the kills falling elsewhere. A sort of revenge style spin on the slasher horror cliché. This is somewhat massively forced, especially when costume changes occur just for the glorification of the protagonist. Thus the horror serves as a rather weak female empowerment fantasy. All the while the horror tone plays itself from brief to gory to pointless, in a rather disappointing array. Events happen because they want them to and have no comment or narrative function that is all that powerful or memorable. Calling the film a black comedy is probably its best defence, if it were all that funny or if it knew what to do with true dark humour. Moments of cliché are thrown in for good measure and it just struggles.

A Cheap Thrill

One of the most unfortunate parts of this film is that it is well shot, with great colours, costumes and performances. It looks the part, and it looks like it should be better than it is. It is just horribly scripted and directed. Pieced together in a confusing mess, whilst never quite knowing what to do with itself, or its cliché’s, or its standard archetypical characters. What we’re left with is a film trying to be something. It entertains but in only the forgettable way, far from where it aims to be. Filmmakers clearly having fun in making it, but never sure what to do with it once its all done.

Conclusion

We should expect this. Once the film industry brings out a few great genre features, it will try to churn out more than a few more. Unfortunately, they can’t always make the grade, and it is with time that more and more of the unfortunate messes will start to take over. This will lead to another death of the genre until something can bring it all back again with renewed life. There will be more like Ready or Not.

Synopsis

Grace Le Domas (Samara Weaving) has newly been wed to the family and is given the initiation of a parlour game with a twist: Hide, Seek and Kill.

Ratings

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A Note on My Reviews

Please read ‘On Reviews‘ for a guide to how I write film reviews. Any spoilers are appropriately marked and, though I personally prefer to know little about a film before seeing it, there is a synopsis below the review for any who wish to see one.