Ready or Not never really felt like a movie that needed a sequel. The original told a complete story, ended on one hell of a punchline, and sent Samara Weaving off covered in blood with a cigarette in hand as one of the great modern horror protagonists. There wasn’t much left to say.
So credit where it’s due to Radio Silence, because Ready or Not 2: Here I Come does a surprisingly good job justifying its own existence.
Rather than simply recreating the cat-and-mouse formula of the first film, the sequel expands the mythology considerably. Moments after surviving the Le Domas family massacre, Grace learns that she’s forced to advance to the next level of the sadistic, twisted game and into another deadly night of hide-and-seek. This time, she’s reunited with her estranged sister Faith (Kathryn Newton) after keeping her as her emergency contact for years, and the pair suddenly find themselves hunted by rival families all competing for control of the High Seat of the Council. It’s an undeniably bigger premise, and one that reminded me a bit of how John Wick: Chapter 2 or Final Destination Bloodlines took the contained worlds of their previous films and blew the doors wide open without completely losing sight of why people liked them in the first place.
The first third of the movie is predictably heavy on exposition as it establishes all of these new families, rules, and power struggles, but Radio Silence does a nice job breaking up the information dumps with the kind of violent slapstick action they’ve become so good at staging. Even when they’re explaining lore, somebody is usually getting stabbed or exploding or meeting an absurdly gruesome end a few minutes later.
It’s also another reminder that they’re exceptionally good at casting these kinds of movies. Samara Weaving slips back into Grace so effortlessly that it almost feels like she never left. She continues walking the tightrope between completely unhinged and deeply empathetic, which is exactly what made the first film work so well. Grace has every reason to lose her mind after everything she’s endured, but Weaving never lets her become so detached that you stop rooting for her. This franchise feels tailor-made for her, and she’s now two-for-two carrying these movies.
Kathryn Newton is probably the biggest wild card entering the sequel. Playing Grace’s estranged sister Faith, she arrives with an entirely different energy than Weaving. Her performance is much more self-aware, sarcastic, and willing to wink at the audience in ways that initially had me worried the film was muddying its own tone. It takes a little while for that performance to settle into the movie around it, but once the violence starts escalating and the story fully commits to its insanity, Newton finds a rhythm that works really well alongside Weaving. By the second half, I was completely on board with the pairing.
That’s become something of a trademark for Radio Silence. Whether it’s these films or their work on the recent Scream entries, they consistently get great performances out of actors while balancing horror, comedy, and action better than just about anyone making studio horror right now. Even their lesser films are tremendously watchable because they understand exactly how much gore, slapstick, and self-awareness to sprinkle into the mix without letting one element completely overwhelm the others.
The supporting cast is a little more hit-and-miss this time around. Sarah Michelle Gellar and Shawn Hatosy get the most material as the Danforth twins, wealthy siblings competing against each other and the other families for a ring capable of placing them atop the Council. I probably preferred Gellar between the two, but neither performance ever reaches the level of memorability that Adam Brody, Henry Czerny, Andie MacDowell, and the rest of the Le Domas family achieved in the original. Of the newcomers, I found myself enjoying David Cronenberg and Elijah Wood the most despite them having significantly less screentime. Cronenberg pops in for only a couple scenes as one of the family patriarchs, while Wood has a lot of fun playing a devilish lawyer whose primary responsibility is explaining the increasingly ridiculous rules both to the families and the audience.
My biggest issue comes once the film reaches its final act. One of the great strengths of the original was its bottled-up momentum. Everything took place over one increasingly chaotic night where every decision only compounded the tension. Here, once the movie shifts away from its cat-and-mouse survival mechanics and toward a fucked up wedding between Grace and one of the Council’s family members, it loses a surprising amount of that momentum.
I also wish the golf course setting had been utilized a bit more. It’s a fun location that occasionally produces some inventive action, but it never feels fully explored before the story moves somewhere else. Combined with a finale that doesn’t entirely stick the landing, the runtime starts to feel a little long. At 108 minutes, I couldn’t help but think trimming ten minutes or reworking the final stretch into something more in line with the rest of the film would’ve made for a tighter experience.
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Still, I walked away pleasantly surprised. My expectations for a Ready or Not sequel were fairly low considering it arrives years after a film that never really demanded a follow-up. Instead, Radio Silence delivers a sequel that’s bigger, bloodier, and far more expansive than I expected. If studio horror is going to keep revisiting movies that probably didn’t need sequels, this is at least how I’d like them to do it. And give all the leading roles to Samara Weaving.
Score: 7/10
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (2026)
- Cast: Samara Weaving, Kathryn Newton, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shawn Hatosy, Nestor Carbonell, David Cronenberg, Elijah Wood, Kevin Durand
- Director: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett
- Genre: Comedy, Horror, Thriller
- Runtime: 108 minutes
- Rated: R
- Release Date: March 20, 2026
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