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There’s a line from the end of From Dusk Till Dawn, written by Quentin Tarantino and delivered with great passion by George Clooney, that goes: 

“Did they look like psychos? Is that what they looked like? No, they were vampires. Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don’t give a f*ck how crazy they are.”

This is something director partners Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett seem to have responded to. They have similarly depicted said bloodsuckers dramatically going kablooey when exposed to the rays of the Sun, in their own movie Abigail. Beyond this though they have also defied Tarantino and Clooney’s sentiment by creating an on screen world where psychos do in fact explode at daybreak too. It certainly doesn’t matter how crazy they are, they just to have made a pact with Lucifer and he’ll do the rest. 

Yep, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett have kind of made this way of dispatching people their thing. It’s what they did for the big surprise ending of 2019’s Ready or Not, and they most certainly returned to it with aplomb in Abigail. Now, as you might expect, it is a key part of Ready or Not 2. They couldn’t work it into Scream 5 or 6 but they did set Mikey Madison on fire so they did what they could within the parameters of that story. 

This then is a movie where people get a lot of red on them. There isn’t as much as Abigail that allegedly drained all the supplies of fake blood in Ireland where it was filmed, in the same way Barbie used up all the pink paint. There’s still quite a lot though, to the point that when the main characters get cleaned up at the end it is actually kind of jarring. While splattered claret is a recurring motif for these guys this still feels quite different though, even if it totally Back-to-the-Futures (that’s a verb now) and carries on immediately from where the last movie left off.

So sure, having escaped a group of satanists who were trying to kill her lest they anger Beelzebub and he turn them to haemoglobin salsa, Samara Weaving’s Grace is now in a similar predicament. The addition of more foes and a fellow victim still does enough to mix things up. There’s a change to the rules of the game they are playing too which adds a new edge (and yes more exploding bodies) and that is interesting. Significantly Grace is now the killer she was pushed into being last time and this element progresses as the dark denouement approaches as well. By the end she is not just acting in self defence.

Of the new characters, Kathryn Newton brings great value as Grace’s sister and Maia Jae is a standout as a jealous ex to the man Grace fatefully married in the last film. There is a particularly amusing punch up between these two love rivals and the final pay off to their antagonism is very satisfying. The movie is not all comedy violence though (seeing people explode is undeniably fun), there is a fair amount of brutality too which is surprising in this type of movie. It could be that in amongst all the extreme bloodshed Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett are prompting the audience to question their detached ability to watch it all. The nastiest fight scene is actually juxtaposed with the silliest which is a definite choice that is saying something.

Elsewhere in the cast we have Elijah Wood who is delightful and Sarah Michelle Geller in her first proper film role for years. It is interesting having these two here as the narrative definitely treats them differently because they are genre royalty. There’s no extreme bloody death for Frodo or Buffy. 

The plot does seem to wrap things up with the devil death cult and does so in very satisfying fashion. Whether we get a third movie is not down to anyone’s ability to re-establish the demonic rituals though, it will be governed by a far greater evil; money. If Ready or Not 2: Here I Come does well at the box office then I’m sure there’ll a Ready or Not 3: Found You but for now this is an entertaining return to the twisted joy of the first film. Not quite as good perhaps, but still body popping fun.