Let's put it this way- there are dissapointments and then there are Ready or Not Level disappointments.
Ready or Not is the new indie Hunger Games/Die Hard/You're Next-ish horror film from Fox Searchlight, I studio I constantly fear will suffer the same fate as the main character in this movie, just in this case, at the hands of a mouse.
The movie centers on a young bride named Grace, who gets caught up in a life or death hunting game with her very rich and eccentric new in-laws.
The game is hide and seek but once creepy Aunt Helene grabs a crossbow it's fair to say they don't play in the traditional way.
A lot of questions arise over the course of the evening. How does Grace win? How does this family justify murder? How bad is the honeymoon going to be if you don't support your wife through your family trying to kill her?
And what's surprising about it is that the movie makes a weird kind of satirical sense- that rich people so keen on getting away with things the rest of us can't will literally sink to any level to make sure they stay that way- even participate in something so supernaturally and superstitiously out there that you want to laugh at them.
The ace in the hole here is not so much how bloody, violent, or scary the movie gets, even though it does have a good share of those, but it's actually how funny it can be.
Members of the family are not just ridiculous but also downright lethally stupid- the cokehead sister may be my favorite comedic character this year.
There's also great scenes involving Justin the most unhelpful onstar employee ever and one involving an almost dead person that feels taken straight out of Austin Powers.
Other members of the family include a patriarch who feels like a evil cult leader, a matriarch who could either be friend or gravest enemy, a reluctant brother, and several murderous son and daughter in laws desperate not to return to the poverty they came from.
And we root for Grace. The movie does well to put her through every test it can think of, from a nail to the hand to bloody scraps to disturbing and disgusting torments.
It also does well to not revel in any kind of serious bloodlust, if she kills at all, it's usually for some kind of survival.
However the movie is being billed as a revenge flick and I guess that description is apt but also kind of an overstatement. I felt the movie could have let her loose a bit more in the later stages.
But the bigger dissapointment is that the movie could have ended on a great absurdist joke, that these people are in fact just psychotic from the disease called money.
Instead it does something that feels like it was focus-grouped in to leave people walking feeling blood-quenched.
It's a great satire and really funny comedy thriller up to this point but an ending that kinda robs it of the point it was trying to make about these people.
Ready or Not is the new indie Hunger Games/Die Hard/You're Next-ish horror film from Fox Searchlight, I studio I constantly fear will suffer the same fate as the main character in this movie, just in this case, at the hands of a mouse.
The movie centers on a young bride named Grace, who gets caught up in a life or death hunting game with her very rich and eccentric new in-laws.
The game is hide and seek but once creepy Aunt Helene grabs a crossbow it's fair to say they don't play in the traditional way.
A lot of questions arise over the course of the evening. How does Grace win? How does this family justify murder? How bad is the honeymoon going to be if you don't support your wife through your family trying to kill her?
And what's surprising about it is that the movie makes a weird kind of satirical sense- that rich people so keen on getting away with things the rest of us can't will literally sink to any level to make sure they stay that way- even participate in something so supernaturally and superstitiously out there that you want to laugh at them.
The ace in the hole here is not so much how bloody, violent, or scary the movie gets, even though it does have a good share of those, but it's actually how funny it can be.
Members of the family are not just ridiculous but also downright lethally stupid- the cokehead sister may be my favorite comedic character this year.
There's also great scenes involving Justin the most unhelpful onstar employee ever and one involving an almost dead person that feels taken straight out of Austin Powers.
Other members of the family include a patriarch who feels like a evil cult leader, a matriarch who could either be friend or gravest enemy, a reluctant brother, and several murderous son and daughter in laws desperate not to return to the poverty they came from.
And we root for Grace. The movie does well to put her through every test it can think of, from a nail to the hand to bloody scraps to disturbing and disgusting torments.
It also does well to not revel in any kind of serious bloodlust, if she kills at all, it's usually for some kind of survival.
However the movie is being billed as a revenge flick and I guess that description is apt but also kind of an overstatement. I felt the movie could have let her loose a bit more in the later stages.
But the bigger dissapointment is that the movie could have ended on a great absurdist joke, that these people are in fact just psychotic from the disease called money.
Instead it does something that feels like it was focus-grouped in to leave people walking feeling blood-quenched.
It's a great satire and really funny comedy thriller up to this point but an ending that kinda robs it of the point it was trying to make about these people.