Ready or Not 2: Here I Come Parent Guide

Satanic death cults: when you're here, you're family. 

After she narrowly avoiding becoming a human sacrifice to Satan, Grace (Samara Weaving) awakens in hospital only to be interrogated by the police for the arson and murder connected with the events of the first film. Her estranged sister, Faith (Kathryn Newton) is listed as Grace's emergency contact and shows up at the hospital with her own emotional baggage in tow. 

Grace and Faith clearly have a lot to work out, specifically the feelings of abandonment and the kind of intense love/hate relationship that can only come from siblings. Faith is sarcastically trying to understand what happened to Grace. Grace is obviously reluctant to explain that her former fiancé is a leader in a satanic murder cult but that seems to be a bit much for Faith to handle at the moment… which is fair. 

However, it turns out Satan is real and he has lawyers! Apparently, Hell and its cabal of ultra-net-worth trust fund earthly ne'er-do-wells have very specific rules that must be followed. In short: a high council of Satan-worshippers controls the world and membership in that council is organized through a byzantine set of bylaws. Council members descend on the Danforth estate from around the world carrying just enough plot and character for you to vaguely identify which part of the globe each councilor is from. For example, the east Asian council members carry katanas, just to jog your memory. Elijah Wood plays the lawyer tasked with enforcing Satan's bylaws. (As a lawyer, I am absolutely tickled pink that Hell has a corporate governance system and at times, was even impressed with its drafting - but I digress.) 

The events of the first movie leave the council chair seat up for grabs and the remaining council members can acquire that seat if the legal representative from their family is able to kill Grace. Grace and Faith are kidnapped from the hospital and brought to the Danforth estate where siblings Ursula and Titus (Sarah Michelle Gellar and Shawn Hatosy) must compete against the other council members to hunt and kill Grace in order to obtain that high council chair. 

The movie then proceeds as part action, part comedy, part horror, par legal procedural as the various council members and their progeny fight, sabotage, quarrel, make deals, and kill each other all in a bid to sacrifice Grace so they can take up the role of chairman in Satan's corporation. Every single part of the Danforth estate is put to a frankly staggering level of creative, gory violence as the sisters fight to survive and escape by dawn. Luckily, their survival doesn’t depend on bloodshed alone: the council has rigid laws, but Grace just might have found a loophole….

Overall, the movie is entertaining (at least for adult genre fans) and stands out as a particularly well-done horror/comedy. There is nothing incredibly new here and the horror lies more in the violence and gore than in the supernatural elements. (Religious viewers may disagree – but they aren’t likely to watch this film anyway.) The violence and gore pale in comparison to more extreme films, but this is certainly not a movie for anyone with an aversion to blood. The acting and directing are passable but not Oscar-worthy. 

That said, predictability isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as it places more focus on what the film does well: capturing the relationship between siblings. Grace and Faith must work out the finer details of their relationship against the backdrop of avoiding death at the hands of the ultra-rich. I hope, dear reader, that you can’t relate to Grace and Faith's experience dealing with murderous cults but I imagine all of us relate to loving our families even when we have been hurt by them. The dynamic between Grace and Faith shows the tenuous relationship of moving past hurt caused by family members while simultaneously holding each other accountable. In many ways, this is just a horror rehash of the redemption arc between estranged family members with way fewer light sabers. 

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Kai Yee