After surviving an all-out attack, the bride discovers she’s reached the next level of the nightmarish game, and this time with her estranged sister. They must stay alive as four rival families hunt them down. A film by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett, starring Samara Weaving, Kathryn Newton, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shawn Hatosy, Nestor Carbonell, David Cronenberg, Kevin Durand, Olivia Cheng, Varun Saranga, Daniel Beirne, Antony Hall, Nadeem Umar-Khitab, Maša Lizdek, Maia Jae, Juan Pablo Romero, Kara Wooten, Grant Nickall, and Elijah Wood.
READY or NOT
HERE I COME
Matt Bettinelli-Olpin • Tyler Gillett
(2020)
After surviving the Le Domas family’s attempted sacrificial ritual, Grace MacCaullay (Samara Weaving) collapses outside the mansion and goes into cardiac arrest. Paramedics manage to revive her and rush her to the hospital.
When she regains consciousness, she finds herself handcuffed to her hospital bed. Detective Roger Bassett (Grant Nickalls) arrives to question her, informing her that she’s being held by the Woodbury Police Department on suspicion of arson and murder. The police found the remains of two people in the house, and Grace’s clothes were drenched in blood that wasn’t hers.
While the detective is questioning Grace, they are interrupted by an unexpected visitor. Grace is startled to see Faith (Kathryn Newton), her estranged sister. The two haven’t spoken since Grace left for college, and Faith apparently never received an invitation to Grace’s wedding. Grace is puzzled, asking how Faith even knew where to find her. Faith, visibly upset, replies that she is still listed as Grace’s emergency contact.
When Faith asks what happened, Grace keeps deflecting, insisting that Faith wouldn’t believe her. Annoyed (honestly, same), Faith gets up to leave, and it’s only then that Grace finally opens up. She tells Faith that after the wedding, Alex asked her to draw a card and play whatever game it said. It seemed strange, but Grace went along with it because she wanted the family to like her. She drew “hide and seek.” The room went silent. Apparently, it was a bad card. The family told her that if she stayed hidden until dawn, she would win. What they didn’t tell her was that they believed if she won, they would all die. So they hunted her down. But she made it to dawn, and they all blew up. Then she saw a translucent figure seated in a chair, who gave her a nod.
Meanwhile, in Rhode Island, Chester Danforth (David Cronenberg) is notified by his lawyer (Elijah Wood) about the Le Domas family incident. Danforth instructs Pernilla (Kara Wooten) to contact his children, then sends a message to the group chat: “Bride survived. Le Domas family gone. The ball is in play.” The message is received by Wan Chen Xing (Olivia Cheng) in Shanghai, Ignacio El Caído (Nestor Carbonell) in Madrid, Bill Wilkinson (Kevin Durand) in Atlantic City, and Viraj Rajan (Nadeem Umar-Khitab) in London.
Moments later, Danforth’s twin children Ursula (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Titus (Shawn Hatosy) arrive. He informs them that the Le Domas family failed and that the bride survived. Titus quickly grasps the implications, knowing that the balance of power is about to shift. Chester acknowledges that he is too old to play the game himself, and that the only way for his family to reclaim their position is to transfer his rights to his children, which requires his death. He removes the gold ring from his finger, and insists that they must win the seat back. He is then suffocated by his own children, a pillow held over his face until he stops moving.
Back at the hospital, Grace is being escorted by Detective Bassett to the station to give a statement. They are ambushed by Bill Wilkinson, who hurls a knife at Bassett, striking him in the neck. Bassett collapses. Bill believes that killing Grace will earn him the high seat, despite what the rules mandate. He is gravely mistaken. The moment he moves in for the kill, his body suddenly explodes. The same fate immediately befalls his family and his entire bloodline.
Faith is stunned, now fully believing everything Grace told her, as they are completely soaked in blood. Fearing that more may be coming, Grace grabs Faith and makes a run for the elevator. But they don’t make it in time. The elevator doors slide open and a canister rolls out, releasing a burst of white fumes that sends them both to the floor. The lawyer and Pernilla show up in gas masks to take Grace. When the lawyer spots Faith, he decides to take her as well.
Grace and Faith regain consciousness to find themselves each tied to a chair, surrounded by strangers in a lodge on Danforth’s golf course. The lawyer steps forward and explains that Grace is there for a very specific reason. As the sole attorney for Mr. Le Bail and the Le Bail organization, which is led by a Council made up of the heads of six families, including Grace’s in-laws, he explains that by surviving the Le Domas family’s game of “Hide and Seek,” Grace triggered a rarely invoked clause in the organization’s bylaws.
On the Council, there is one seat that carries more power than all the others, known as the High Seat. Whoever holds it wields a sigil of power that can control everything. Until now, that seat was occupied by Chester Danforth. When the Le Domas family was wiped out, it triggered the clause. And for the first time in many years, the High Seat is vacant.
The lawyer elaborates that surviving a game is extremely rare, and that doing so comes with a special reward. Grace is being given a chance to win the High Seat herself, if she can survive until dawn.
Hail Satan.
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A film by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett, starring Samara Weaving, Kathryn Newton, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shawn Hatosy, Nestor Carbonell, David Cronenberg, Kevin Durand, Olivia Cheng, Varun Saranga, Daniel Beirne, Antony Hall, Nadeem Umar-Khitab, Maša Lizdek, Maia Jae, Juan Pablo Romero, Kara Wooten, Grant Nickall, and Elijah Wood.
Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett with a screenplay by Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy, READY or NOT : HERE I COME is a direct sequel of READY or NOT, following the surviving bride and her estranged sister as they are hunted by Satan-worshipping families in a deadly ritual to claim a high seat in a council that controls the world.
Building on the supernatural twist from the first film’s finale, the sequel delivers an entertaining expansion of the lore. We learn there are actually six families in total, all tied to a strict set of unbreakable rules. And breaking them is punishable by death.
Casting Elijah Wood as the lawyer is an amusing touch, given that he once played Frodo in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings, a character destined to destroy the One Ring that could rule them all. Here, he plays a representative of Le Bail who oversees the deadly ritual, where competing families play for a gold ring symbolizing the high seat of a council with the power to control the world.
The sequel introduces a larger, more international ensemble with rival families from China, Spain, the US, and England. However, the new players come across as bumbling amateurs fumbling through a deadly game, some with absurd arrogance that eventually leads to their demise.
For a movie trying to be a horror-comedy, it just never pushes the humor or the darkness far enough. The funny thing is, the original movie genuinely kept you on the edge of your seat, believing the protagonist’s life was actually on the line. The sequel fails to replicate those thrills, largely because the script introduces loopholes into its own mythology. Instead of escalating the danger, these workarounds make the conclusion feel underwhelming. It earns 2.5 stars for the plot, and a bonus 0.5 stars for casting Frodo Baggins.
READY OR NOT: HERE I COME premiered at SXSW on 14 March 2026. The film was theatrically released in the United States on 20 March.
