{"id":12527,"date":"2019-08-21T13:00:34","date_gmt":"2019-08-21T20:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=12527"},"modified":"2019-08-24T13:46:41","modified_gmt":"2019-08-24T20:46:41","slug":"review-ready-or-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/review-ready-or-not\/","title":{"rendered":"REVIEW: <i>Ready or Not<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The rich sure do love their rituals, huh? That\u2019s something that <strong><em>Ready or Not<\/em><\/strong> heroine Grace (Samara Weaving) finds out incredibly early on in her marriage to gaming heir Alex Le Domas (Mark O\u2019Brien) in Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett\u2019s intricately crafted, gory-as-all-get-out haunted hunted house thriller. It\u2019s all fun and, uh, games until someone gets hurt.<\/p>\n<p>Grace thinks the idea of hosting a midnight family game night right after tying the knot sounds a bit weird, but what does she know? She\u2019s not from their decidedly blue-blooded world, having grown up in foster homes. Thus, while her new husband seems wary of spending time with his long-estranged parents and siblings, she\u2019s enchanted by the idea of being part of a real family for once. She doesn\u2019t mind that his mother (Andie MacDowell), older brother (Adam Brody), and father (Henry Czerny) seem a bit, well\u2026 creepy. Not to mention that some of them think she\u2019s in it for the money.<\/p>\n<p>As it turns out, the Le Domas family fortune came with a tiny little curse, and in order to satiate the devilish spirit of the man who gave their great-great-grandfather his big break, they\u2019ve got to initiate each new Le Domas into the family by making them play a little game. Most of the games on offer are of the innocent variety (or so the characters say): standards like Old Maid and Go Fish. Alex knows firsthand, however, that the evening could go terribly awry, should Grace be unlucky enough to pluck hide-and-seek \u2014 their own version of \u201cmost dangerous game\u201d \u2014 from the deck of options.<\/p>\n<p>Once Grace draws the dreaded card scurries out of the room to hide, the clan begins to assemble their weaponry, as they believe that if they don\u2019t hunt her down before the sun comes up and perform a ritual sacrifice, they\u2019ll die (or worse, lose their riches). Alex escapes the room he\u2019s been guarded in and attempts to clue Grace in on what she\u2019s up against, advising her on the best way to leave the mansion post haste, but it\u2019s obviously not going to be smooth sailing.<\/p>\n<p>The character beats that screenwriters Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy roll out often feel a bit too expected \u2014 at least where Alex is concerned \u2014 but they\u2019ve got a little something up their sleeve, and that something is a real wild card. Enter Adam Brody, who post-<em>O.C.<\/em> stardom has made a weird little career for himself playing weird little characters in projects like TV\u2019s <em>The League<\/em> and movies like <em>Scream 4<\/em>. Bringing the same offbeat energy and sardonic sense of humor he brought to his role as the villainous emo singer in Karyn Kusama\u2019s underrated horror comedy <em>Jennifer\u2019s Body<\/em> way back when, he nearly steals the spotlight (and second billing) here.<\/p>\n<p>But it\u2019s Weaving who turns in a career-making performance here, rattling off one-liners that would make good old Seth Cohen smile. The Australian actress delivers a spirited performance as she tears through the family\u2019s maze of a mansion in her tattered wedding dress (the film definitely relishes this imagery), dodging spears, bullets, and rotting corpses, attempting to flee the bourgeois dream she thought was her happily-ever-after. As it turns out, the film is as cynical about marriage as it is about the 1% and their relentless pageantry, and rightfully so: With in-laws like these, who needs enemies? <a href=\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/crookedc-01.svg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12029\" src=\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/crookedc-01.svg\" alt=\"\" width=\"21\" height=\"24\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<h3>Grade: <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">B+<\/span><\/h3>\n<h5>1 hr., 35 min.; rated R for violence, bloody images, language throughout, and some drug use.<\/h5>\n<hr \/>\n<h6>Join our <a href=\"http:\/\/crookedmarquee.us16.list-manage.com\/subscribe?u=dc6679cd997ec610eeaf50562&amp;id=db71dbf4c3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">mailing list<\/a>! Follow us on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/CrookedMarquee\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Twitter<\/a>! <a href=\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/writers-guidelines\/\">Write<\/a>\u00a0for us!<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The rich sure do love their rituals, huh? That\u2019s something that Ready or Not heroine Grace (Samara Weaving) finds out [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":568,"featured_media":12528,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1381,340],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","category-movie-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/568"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}