Rent Ready or Not (2019)

Brilliantly fun horror-comedy - Ready or Not review by BG

Ready or Not tackles the minefield of tongue-in-cheek horror which can be so tricky to get right.

Luckily, it nails the tone dead-on, coming across somewhere between the 'trapped in a house' killer thrills of 'You're Next' and the sardonic wit of Daniel Craig mystery 'Knives Out'.

Samara Weaving is terrific as the lead ('Grace') who is dropped in at the deep end on her wedding night, when the game that she has to play in order to be accepted by her new In-Laws' turns out to be a life-or-death game of hide and seek.

Thankfully by this stage the sharp comical tone, edginess, and suspension of disbelief have been set up very nicely by an array of fine performances, and little dialogue ticks, habits among the family and little bickering arguments continue to crop up to golden effect at perfect moments, thoroughly enriching proceedings.

The family mansion has a lovely 'old murder-mystery' character about it, and the family are a collection of amusingly differing personalities.

Weaving is charismatic throughout, and gets great mileage out of her leading role. Adam Brody is great as the groom's deeply conflicted and messed-up brother, and although Andie MacDowell and Henry Czerny are great fun as the in-laws, Nicky Guadagni constantly threatens to steal the show as a crazed and fanatical aunt with a shock of white hair and a killer stare.

The gore is occasional but blood-soaked and cringe-inducing, the comedy is dry and knowing, and the dialogue is deliciously barbed and amusing. There is also a nice bit of back-story to make sense of the absurd game of life and death, which helps to reinforce the reasons behind the craziness.

Directorially, 'Radio Silence' (the directing team previously best known for 'Southbound' and part of 'V/H/S') shoot the film brilliantly, capturing the comedy and the violence with equal aplomb, and creating an array of shots which vary from gorgeous to look at, tension-inducing, and just plain gorgeously colourful. It's no wonder that they've been given 'Scream 5' for their next big gig, and on the evidence of this, I'm a lot more hopeful that I would have been before.

If you like horror with a frequent scattering of humour, grown-up barbed dialogue and lots of gore, there's no 'Not' about it; you're 'Ready' for this.

Good fun horror - Ready or Not review by HM

Comedy plot, but thrilling and a none stop chase movie. Good to look at, pointless swearing that didn't fit the characters, but good characters none the less. It is a thriller, bloodbath and a dash of humour, tongue in cheek kind of thing. Very entertaining and works across horror/thriller genres in Zombieland mode. Very entertaining, enjoyed it; great B movie stuff.

Laughs amongst the gore - Ready or Not review by CP Customer

Good film with an unusual storyline. Horrible but funny, and nice to see a woman running away without falling or twisting her ankle for a change.

The acting is good and the setting really adds to the story.

Remarkable mix of fun and thrills - Ready or Not review by Alphaville

A remarkable comedy thriller set in and around a big house that is everything Knives Are Out wishes it could be. Newly-wed Samara Weaving discovers on her wedding night that she’s married into a family of “psycho-killers” and they’re out to get her before dawn with an assortment of weapons they barely know how to use. Funny? You bet. One of them even has to look up how to use his crossbow on Youtube.

It’s not easy to walk the tightrope between fun and thrills, but this film finds the perfect mix, with each adding to the other. Together with great dialogue, Weaving’s naturalistic performance grounds the film in a way that cleverly heightens the increasing mayhem. With a cracking pace and directorial flair, there’s never a dull moment. Okay, so it’s a genre film with no pretensions to emotional or philosophical depth, but judged purely as a film this well deserves it’s four stars. Watch out for that rusty nail!

Annoyingly Entertaining. - Ready or Not review by RP

One of those films I hesitated to put on my long list of DVDs. I mean it is a comedy horror thriller. They never work that well. But in the end when you snort at Melanie Scrofano's character every time she is on screen and have to look away when Samara Weaving's character is climbing up a ladder and there is a close up of a nail at the top. Well it actually works well if you know what you are getting into. It is fun and silly and entertaining. It shouldn't work but it does. It is just annoyingly entertaining.

Didn't work... - Ready or Not review by SH

It was promising to begin with, then went quickly downhill... and the dreadful ending just topped it off... it was as if they had listened to 12 year old boys at a review who said "why don't you blow them all up at the end" - and that was that! Very disappointed.

Superb black comedy horror - Ready or Not review by CD

I really enjoyed this film. It has just the right balance of horror, gore, quirky humour and interesting characters. The cast is great and the finale is well done. If you liked this film, you may also like the 1989 film "War of the Roses" which also gets the black humour balance just right in the context of a warring family.