The bloody bride-to-be is back in action. Seven years after the original film, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come continues the story of Grace MacCaullay (Samara Weaving), who finds herself once again trapped in a deadly game of hide and seek. This time, her younger sister Faith is thrown into the mix, and these two must work together to survive an onslaught of villains.
ComingSoon’s Jonathan Sim sat down with key members of the cast and crew, including actors Kathryn Newton (Lisa Frankenstein, Freaky), Sarah Michelle Gellar (I Know What You Did Last Summer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer), and Elijah Wood (The Lord of the Rings, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). He also interviewed directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, the filmmaking duo commonly known as Radio Silence (Scream, Scream VI, Abigail).
Kathryn Newton: The New Sister
Newton, who had previously worked with Radio Silence on Abigail, described what it was like to step into the role of Grace’s younger sister in a part that was written for her: “I thought about how I could support the character of Grace. I considered where my character, Faith, falls into this and what’s the point of her I thought about the big picture and the whole story. I determined that I was a ‘problem’ and looked for ways to become one. The role was written for me, so it was just about being myself. If I were her little sister in real life, I would be a problem; she is in the wrong place at the wrong time and causes trouble just by existing. It was about finding places to support Samara Weaving and letting her lead the way.”
“What’s funny is that I think I turned into her just by being around her,” Newton said of Ready or Not 2. “I am like a sponge. There is one time in the movie where we both crossed our arms at the exact same time; none of that was planned. It becomes osmosis. When you hang out with someone for 12 hours a day, you are going to turn into them.”
Those who recall the original Ready or Not may remember an ending filled with bloody explosions. This sequel managed to up the ante. “Some of [the fake blood] tastes like rubbing alcohol, specifically the kind they paint on you, and that sucks,” Newton says. “Then there is some that tastes like chocolate, caramel, strawberry, or cherry. The mouth blood is my favorite and actually tastes pretty good. That is the one I spit out at people, like when I get into a fight with Sean [Hatosy]. Then there is the “goo.” I don’t know what that’s made out of, but it’s fun and it is what we do it for.”
Radio Silence: The Minds Behind the Madness
Increasing the blood is only one way the filmmakers wanted this movie to go bigger than the first with Ready or Not 2. “Our touchstones for this were Aliens and Terminator 2,” director Matt Bettinelli-Olpin says. “They are not horror movies specifically, but you could argue Alien and Terminator are basically a slasher and a haunted house movie. The same way those two movies upped everything and performed a slight genre shift, and expanded the world, that was something that was really at the front of our minds when we were working on this.”
“We approached this movie much like we approached Scream 6,” director Tyler Gillett says. “We wanted to challenge the notion of what the first movie was rather than just playing the ‘greatest hits.’ We did not want to treat it with a lot of preciousness; we wanted to challenge ourselves and the audience’s idea of what the next chapter in Grace’s story could be.”
Although Ready or Not 2 goes bigger than the first, Gillett maintains that the film was still limited. “It was in no way a big-budget movie,” says Gillett. “The ambition was also much grander this time. We have said many times that this is the hardest movie we have ever made because the ambition and what we had to achieve it were at opposite ends of the spectrum.”
“When you are pushed, you have to decide what the most valuable elements are and what to get rid of,” he continues. “We hopefully always write to a much larger ambition than you have the budget to create because it forces you to be selective and turn into the character’s story and not about the spectacle. That’s what we love about movies and what we think makes audiences connect with movies. It’s the characters and whatever the central conflict and dynamic is between them.”
Elijah Wood & Sarah Michelle Gellar: The New Villains
With a new entry to the franchise comes new characters. It wouldn’t be Ready or Not without the villains, and here we have Sarah Michelle Gellar as Ursula, one of the people hunting down Grace and Faith, and Elijah Wood as the enigmatic lawyer overseeing the game. A key scene from the trailer sees The Lawyer explaining the new rules of the game to Grace.
Wood reflected on delivering the exposition: “This is really the first time I have ever encountered having to articulate the rules of the film. I don’t have a method, but the challenge was to make the character feel alive so he isn’t just a robot of information…I just tried to keep it on its feet and not let it feel boring.”
Gellar shared an anecdote from her famous lead role on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series: “The only good thing on Buffy was that whoever got the exposition got to choose how to say the crazy words because they were the first person to do it. Then everybody had to say it that way afterward. That is how we made it better.”
Despite playing horror icons we often root for in projects like Buffy, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Scream 2, and The Grudge, Gellar reflected on playing an antagonist: “Playing ‘bad’ is always fun, but I try to humanize my bad characters too. If you just play bad for bad, it isn’t interesting to the audience. The best way to keep an audience interested in a bad character is to show snippets of humanity so they get confused about whether they hate them. I tried to give Ursula some humanity. She doesn’t see herself as one of the bad guys; she believes there has always been a system of checks and balances, and that is how the world works and she has been raised to believe that and that’s all she knows.”
Because this is a horror movie, Gellar and Wood shared the scariest movies they’ve ever seen. “There is a movie called Begotten that E. Elias Merhige made,” Wood says. “It is in black and white and loosely tells a story like that of the Virgin Mary giving birth, but there is no dialogue. The filmmaker processed and messed up the film so it is difficult to see what you are looking at. Things are violent, uncomfortable, and gross. I found that to be very disturbing.”
“Spice World,” joked Gellar, voicing her love of Alan Cumming. “Misery scared me,” she said, bringing up a particular scene surrounding Kathy Bates and a sledgehammer.
What other characters would survive deadly hide and seek?
When asked which of her other characters would survive this deadly game, Newton replied, “I think Millie Kessler from Freaky would have a pretty good shot.” Her character in that film infamously swaps bodies with a serial killer. As an alternative, Newton mentions Cassie Lang/Ant-Girl from Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, a character known for her ability to shrink.
“How is this even a hard question for me?” Gellar jokes, acknowledging her role as Buffy Summers. “I think she would be fine.”
“I’m going to say Frodo with the Ring,” Wood says, referring to his famous role as Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings franchise. “He just puts the Ring on and disappears.”
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come arrives in theaters on March 20.