Sometimes, the splashiest horror movies of the summer aren't the ones that reinvent the wheel, but the ones that just jack the speed up to 10 on said wheel. That's what we get with Ready or Not, a horror-comedy funfest that takes a little bit of Clue (1985), a dash of You're Next (2013), and buckets of Sam Raimi-style gore effects to produce one of the most gleeful, popcorny fright flicks of the season. Are you ready?
Ready or Not (U.S.A.)
Released: August 21, 2019
Director: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett
Screenplay: Guy Busick & R. Christopher Murphy
Tagline: "The Game Begins"
Cast:
Samara Weaving as Grace
Adam Brody as Daniel Le Domas
Mark O'Brien as Alex Le Domas
Henry Czerny as Tony Le Domas
Andie MacDowell as Becky Le Domas
Former foster child Grace is marrying into the staggeringly wealthy, blue-blooded Le Domas family, who made their fortune as a gaming dynasty generations ago thanks to a generous benefactor. Despite their misgivings, Grace is marrying her fiance Alex for all the right reasons. She's a kind, genuine person happy to have found the big family she always wanted. But Grace soon finds that there's a lot you take on when you marry into money. Strange traditions must be upheld. Rituals that could end in either merrymaking or murder.
Ready or Not takes the conventions of The Most Dangerous Game (1932) and spruces them up for a modern critiquing of the 1%. The film makes no bold statement or offers any sort of scathing critique we've never encountered before--excessive wealth is dangerous, whether inherited or otherwise, and those that have it will go to great lengths to keep it rather than see their lifestyle threatened. What mattes here is the delivery, which is brutal, blood-soaked, and a total rollercoaster of jumps, jolts, and laughs. There's a certain balance that needs to be achieved in order to fashion a top-notch horror comedy, and it can be tricky to get just right, but Ready or Not is such a precise, tightly-written film that they really do nail that mixture. A fantastic and game cast adds to the viewer's delight as well.
Horror darling Samara Weaving leads the fray, delivering a phenomenal performance that will make you squeal and cheer in equal measure. Adam Brody also stands out as brooding brother Daniel, despondent over the family legacy and his own role in maintaining that status. All of the characters end up fleshed out by the time the credits roll, including the gorgeous mansion setpiece, whose secret passageways, twisted hallways, and gilded floors make it a character all its own. You can tell the production design team must have been giddy laying out the plans for the labyrinthine Le Domas mansion.
It seems like everyone had a blast making this movie, in fact, which is one of the things that make sit so refreshing. Ready or Not is summer movie from days of old, unconcerned with setting up dark mythologies, larger universes, or never-ending franchises. It's an original story seeking only to deliver thrills and chills while being funny as hell along the way. And in that regard, it's a winner.
Ready or Not
5 - Totally Terrifying
4 - Crazy Creepy
3 - Fairly Frightening
2 - Slightly Scary
1 - Hardly Horror
An entire generation, maybe even two if we're getting technical, recalls being scarred for life by the macabre stories--and even more so, the twisted illustrations--of Alvin Schwartz and Stephen Gammell's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, a trilogy of nightmare-inducing collections that brought local legends, campfire tales, and ghost stories to grisly, realistic life. Now those short, savage shockers have made their way to the big screen, and they've brought the scary with them.
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (USA/Canada)
Released: August 9, 2019
Director: Andre Ovredal
Screenplay: Dan & Kevin Hageman (story by Guillermo del Toro, Patrick Melton, & Marcus Dunstan)
Tagline: "Based on the iconic book series"
Cast:
Zoe Margaret Colletti as Stella Nichols
Michael Garza as Ramon Morales
Austin Zajur as Chuck Steinberg
Gabriel Rush as August "Auggie" Hilderbrandt
Natalie Ganzhorn as Ruth Steinberg
Austin Abrams as Tommy Milner
Kathleen Pollard as Sarah Bellows
On Halloween night, 1968, in the small, quiet town of Mill Valley, Pennsylvania, horror junkie and social outcast Stella Nichols and her friends invoke the spirit of the holiday by pranking back the school bullies, trick-or-treating, and showing the new guy in town their creepy local legend: the abandoned, supposedly haunted house of the Bellows family, a dilapidated mansion shrouded in rumors of child-murdering, insane daughters, and black magic. Naturally, they find themselves trapped in the basement, where the story claims one Sarah Bellows was imprisoned by her own family for being different, and where she wrote scary stories, whispering them through the walls to anyone who would hear them. Stella finds the legendary book of scary stories, but when she takes it home, a darkness is unleashed upon her and her friends, and the only way to stop it is to find out the whole story.
The frame narrative is Scary Stories' weakest element, by far. An uninspired, contrived set-up meant to churn out the monsters one right after the other. But isn't that what we're all paying for, anyway? We know why we're here, and the movie does too, so I'm not going to take points off for the filmmakers giving us exactly what we wanted from this adaptation. In fact, I applaud that they didn't go the anthology route, which I imagine was tempting. I think it would have left the viewer disjointed whereas here we become invested in the characters. And the monsters and creature effects, of course.
While our main crew slips easily into teenage stock types, there are moments where each performer shines through. Casting relative unknowns and actual teen actors was a benefit here, especially since the film is targeted at a young adult audience and is very much structured as a gateway film for the genre. That being said, Ovredal isn't afraid to drop some serious scares in here, but as most of us would agree, that's the tried and true way to hook new blood. The frights are well-earned, and the combo practical/CGI effects are impressive, rendering Gammell's iconic drawings to a T. The Jangly Man and the spider scene are highlights, an effective combination of psychological terror and twitchy, gross-out body horror.
Ovredal excels with tone, both in scares and general atmosphere. Mill Valley is quickly established as a Derry/Castle Rock-type Appalachian village faced with looming change as the cloud of the draft hangs thick, the Vietnam War kicks into high gear, and Nixon bumbles his way into the presidency. Environmental exploration shots and a chilly score--Lana Del Ray's witchy, weird cover of Donovan's "Season of the Witch," in particular--will make your flesh goosebump at an imagined autumn breeze as you swear you could taste cinnamon in the air. And could there be more perfect conditions under which to hear a scary story? Well, aside from in the dark, of course.
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
5 - Totally Terrifying
4 - Crazy Creepy
3 - Fairly Frightening
2 - Slightly Scary
1 - Hardly Horror
