Tag, You’re It

When we discussed They Will Kill You I mentioned how strange it was that the film came out within a week of Ready or Not: Here I Come, the 2026 sequel to 2019’s Ready or Not. Admittedly it was pretty weird that Ready or Not was getting a seven year’s late sequel, because while that film was great, that was a long time to go between iterations in a series. Any buzz for the sequel, you would think, would have already dried up. But then to release it within a few days of another film that was functionally a carbon copy of the concept… that’s even weirder, for all films involved.

The fact that we have three films about a woman getting trapped in a building and having to fight her way out through a group of Satan worshippers is strange enough. Yes, it’s a decent concept, but one would think that there would only be so much story that could be told via that idea. And, in fact, that does seem to bear true as both Ready or Not: Here I Come and They Will Kill You use the same hook to get their heroines into the story: instead of running away, they have to stay and fight to save their sisters. Two films, released within a week of each other, and they have practically the same story.

This isn’t necessarily anything new. The whole trope of “twin films” has been around for a while. Hollywood studios seem to have a natural knack for coming up with the same concept, making functionally the same films at two different studios, and then releasing them within a year of each other (Armageddon and Deep Impact being one of the more famous examples of this). But even knowing this, one would assume the studios would look at each other and say, “maybe releasing these movies within a week of each other would dilute the Box Office for both movies. And it did, as Ready or Not: Here I Come made $15 Mil less than its predecessor, while They Will Kill You couldn’t even cross $20 Mil during its run. Sometimes it’s better for all parties to take a beat, maybe stepping back, and saying, “you know… you have this weekend. We’ll find another slot for our carbon copy film.”

Although in fairness, if either film needed to take a beat and find another weekend, it was They Will Kill You. Having now watched both films, I can attest that Ready or Not: Here I Come is the better movie. It’s tighter, funnier, and more interesting, with its twists working better on every front. I liked both films for what they were, but in a head-to-head battle one of them was going to give, and it wasn’t the seven years late sequel to a film most people generally liked.

Ready or Not: Here I Come (the marketing materials referred to it as Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, but the title in the film itself omits the number) picks up immediately after the events of the first film. After all the damage Grace MacCaullay (Samara Weaving) took during her very violent game of Hide and Seek, she winds up in the hospital. She wakes up, handcuffed to the hospital bed, because the entire Le Domas family is dead, and she’s the prime suspect in the murders (even though, as we know, it was self-defense on her part). She’d likely end up in jail, except her surviving the game of Hide and Seek has triggered a contingency, one she won’t like.

It seems that the Le Domas family was just one of six families that all ruled the world from a high council. With their failure to fulfill their game of Hide and Seek they’ve caused a realignment of the ruling parties. The high council seat is now open for all competitors, and the six families have to battle it out to see who takes the top slot. And caught in the middle is Grace as she has to play Hide and Seek again just to survive. Oh, and her sister, Faith MacCaullay (Kathryn Newton), is stuck playing as well just because she came to visit her sister in the hospital, and is now trapped in the game as well. The two sisters are going to have to work together if they’re going to survive this double-or-nothing Satanic game.

Taken on its own merits, Ready or Not: Here I Come is a pretty solid follow-up to the 2019 horror comedy. The first film had a very tight concept, and its entire story was seemingly self contained. Simply repeating the same concept would be hard, and yet by shoving Grace into a bigger stakes game, updating the rules of how the game works (without really having to pull a retcon on what we already know), and then adding in Grace’s sister, it changes up the material enough to feel free and interesting. It’s the right kind of sequel for Ready or Not, and it works.

Of course, by that same metric I don’t really see how a third film could work. Ready or Not: Here I Come raises the stakes so high that pulling the trick for a third time would get ludicrous. This film already knows just how silly it is, being funnier and more over the top than its predecessor. It pokes fun at itself, and all the weird tropes that have developed between the two films, and it is fully aware that it has stretched its concept as far as it can go. Ready or Not: Here I Come stretches the concept as far as it can go, and it pretty well has to act as the end point for the idea as pushing it any further just wouldn’t work.

But then I think it succeeds as well as it does because it gives Grace more to fight for than just herself. Yes, the film pulls a small retcon by introducing her sister, Faith, even though she supposedly had no family in the first film. Faith, though, works as a grounding element. Instead of fighting just to have her perfect life, or for a man who, clearly, is compromised, Grace is battling to regain the family she actually lost, the one person in her life that used to mean something. There’s a back and forth between the sisters as they work through their own baggage, but having the two together, working through their story, refocuses Ready or Not: Here I Come, making it work even better.

All around this film has a solid handle on its material, and it knows how to balance its story in just the right way, and then get out while the getting is good. It pushes itself as far as it can go, and then exits, stage right, before it gets tiresome. That’s to this film’s benefit, though, only if there isn’t another movie with the same concept, released at the same time, forcing people to say, “you know, maybe I’ve seen too much of this whole genre.”

What really sank Ready or Not: Here I Come in theaters was the fact that They Will Kill You came out just a week later. Both of them were fighting for the same territory, at the same time, quite literally in theaters right next to each other. That diluted the money both of them could make, since audiences weren’t likely to willingly spend their hard earned money twice for the same film at the same time, and it brought down the Box Office for both films. A sequel to Ready or Not was anticipated by its fans, but then having They Will Kill You out only a week later made everyone wonder if we really needed two of these movies doing the thing we’d already seen before, back in 2019. We really didn’t.

Now, though, freed of the constraints of the theater experience, when audiences can find the film on their own time, Ready or Not: Here I Come shines. It’s a fast, funny, well paced film that ups the stakes of the first Ready or Not while never losing sight of the fun. It’s over-the-top, gory, and violent, but then, so was the first film. This is a proper sequel to Ready or Not, and now that you can watch it without having any other films sucking the oxygen out of the room, you can enjoy it on its own merits. I really think you should, as it’s great.