READY OR NOT: A REVIEW
The movie is about a young woman marrying into a rich and eccentric family, who force her to play a deadly game on the wedding night to be accepted into it. Samara Weaving plays the poor bride who fell in love with a rich guy, who discovers, to her shock, that her in-laws want to kill her before the sun rises on her wedding night.
The idea isn't exactly original. The direction is somewhat listless and tries to rely heavily on horror movie tropes. The actors try to make it convincing but this is a group collected on their good looks more than their abilities. Compounding the issue, the weak screenplay and weird lighting and colour grading saps the performance out of even a seasoned veteran like Andie MacDowell, the most well known among the cast. This movie has bits and parts that work for it, but overall it was a letdown. The twists and turns of the scripts were telegraphed miles before they arrived; the physical comedy and horror wasn't distinct enough to compensate for the unoriginality; the character motivations were predictable and overall falls flat.
Weaving tries her best, one of the young actors with good screen presence. Her performance is caught between the unlucky young woman running from an unfair situation and the vengeful bride a la Kill Bill. But her strong screen presence is wasted here in script indecision as she shifts back and forth between these two personas too many times to weaken the arc. Surprisingly, Adam Brody, whose character started off as the stock irresponsible brother, is the most realized character in the movie, and was the only one who held my interest every time he was on screen. His inner turmoil, the wrestling between emotions of guilt and shame, and loyalty to the family, is a good example of an actor making the best out of the limited range his script originally allowed him to do.
Most movie tropes are present in "Ready or Not", the lucky girl, the sensitive rich guy who hates his rich family, the sneering matriarch, the charismatic and scenery chewing dad, the practical and in-charge mom, perpetually drunk brother, in-laws varyingly ambitious to spoilt, professionally creepy family butler and the unfortunate maidservants. Unfortunately the director seems to have stopped halfway between making the film a truly great horror film that also provides scathing social commentary. The movie seems to have settled into a middle path between proper satire and shallow commentary on the state of the world. Considering how much the ideas of the callousness of the rich towards the less privileged have been expressed well in many horror movies, and the overall script had the wherewithal to deliver it, this movie falls short for me. Sometimes, fun and gore, packaged somewhat competently, isn't enough for me to rate a movie good. This movie is good, but only by a small margin. I wouldn't watch it again.
FINAL THOUGHTS What a waste of an opportunity. All the ingredients where there, just not in the right amounts.
Andie MacDowell looks weird. I blame the editing and the lighting.
Adam Brody is really good.
Some of the cinematography is really good. The inside of the mansion, in many scenes, is simply beautiful.
RATING 5.5/10
The movie is about a young woman marrying into a rich and eccentric family, who force her to play a deadly game on the wedding night to be accepted into it. Samara Weaving plays the poor bride who fell in love with a rich guy, who discovers, to her shock, that her in-laws want to kill her before the sun rises on her wedding night.
The idea isn't exactly original. The direction is somewhat listless and tries to rely heavily on horror movie tropes. The actors try to make it convincing but this is a group collected on their good looks more than their abilities. Compounding the issue, the weak screenplay and weird lighting and colour grading saps the performance out of even a seasoned veteran like Andie MacDowell, the most well known among the cast. This movie has bits and parts that work for it, but overall it was a letdown. The twists and turns of the scripts were telegraphed miles before they arrived; the physical comedy and horror wasn't distinct enough to compensate for the unoriginality; the character motivations were predictable and overall falls flat.
Weaving tries her best, one of the young actors with good screen presence. Her performance is caught between the unlucky young woman running from an unfair situation and the vengeful bride a la Kill Bill. But her strong screen presence is wasted here in script indecision as she shifts back and forth between these two personas too many times to weaken the arc. Surprisingly, Adam Brody, whose character started off as the stock irresponsible brother, is the most realized character in the movie, and was the only one who held my interest every time he was on screen. His inner turmoil, the wrestling between emotions of guilt and shame, and loyalty to the family, is a good example of an actor making the best out of the limited range his script originally allowed him to do.
Most movie tropes are present in "Ready or Not", the lucky girl, the sensitive rich guy who hates his rich family, the sneering matriarch, the charismatic and scenery chewing dad, the practical and in-charge mom, perpetually drunk brother, in-laws varyingly ambitious to spoilt, professionally creepy family butler and the unfortunate maidservants. Unfortunately the director seems to have stopped halfway between making the film a truly great horror film that also provides scathing social commentary. The movie seems to have settled into a middle path between proper satire and shallow commentary on the state of the world. Considering how much the ideas of the callousness of the rich towards the less privileged have been expressed well in many horror movies, and the overall script had the wherewithal to deliver it, this movie falls short for me. Sometimes, fun and gore, packaged somewhat competently, isn't enough for me to rate a movie good. This movie is good, but only by a small margin. I wouldn't watch it again.
FINAL THOUGHTS What a waste of an opportunity. All the ingredients where there, just not in the right amounts.
Andie MacDowell looks weird. I blame the editing and the lighting.
Adam Brody is really good.
Some of the cinematography is really good. The inside of the mansion, in many scenes, is simply beautiful.
RATING 5.5/10