Ready Or Not

Laurie Strode. Ellen Ripley. Anna Peterson. Sidney Prescott. Sarah Carter. Sally Hardesty. Can ye all push over there a little bit? Make a little room please. There's someone here to join ye. This is Grace. Why yes, that is a torn wedding dress she has on. Yup, that is a rifle and an ammo belt containing elephant bullets. Indeed that is her blood. Well some of it anyway. Grace just needs to rest for a moment and catch her breath because she's just entered the pantheon of horror icons. Please make her welcome.

The Le Domas family is old money and they are very particular about who gets to share their wealth. Alex is about to make Grace his wife and not everyone is happy about this. Some older family members see her as a gold digger but the younger generation are thankfully more welcoming. That is until a post wedding family game sees Grace running for her life when she realises just how the Le Domas fortune came about.

I loved this. Loved it. 95 minutes of blood and belly laughs. It's lean and economical and not a minute is wasted. We get a quick intro to the main players and we're off. At any given moment you'll be laughing, horrified or chewing the knuckles off yourself and you'll never once be bored or tempted to look at your watch. You have love a well paced horror film. Far too many blow their load early or save all the good stuff to the end but Ready Or Not does it right and gets it's blend of horror and comedy just perfect. It also manages to upturn all the usual horror cliches you'll expect. It's always fun when the usual tropes pop up but quickly get swatted away. 1 moment involving a car and another involving a child both made the screening I was at explode with surprised laughter.

Because it's a short film there's not much in the way of depth but the film still manages to get in it's potshots. The 1%. Their money. Their privileges. Their expectations. Their treatment of the have nots. In an era where the most powerful man in the world came from a privileged background and has no issues trampling those less fortunate it feels like a timely watch. To quote Grace "Fucking rich people." And as such it's a joy to see one of the have not's fighting back. Seeing the moneyed folk's love of classical music backfiring on them is just priceless. We all love that vicarious thrill and Samara Weaving does a mighty job as the audience proxy. She's come a long way from Summer Bay and this will be the film to really show her off. That one shot half way through the film of her looking at herself in the mirror is a brilliant one and as for her final shot. Oh yes. OH YES.

Weaving gets the lion's share of the screentime but a few others stand out. Adam Brody is quietly impressive as the black sheep of the Le Domas clan and Henry Czerny is mighty craic especially late on when all his well laid plans are crashing down around his head. It's late on that some people may have an issue with the film as it takes a turn into Bonkersville. They may decry it's silliness but everything that happens is laid out already, it's not out of the blue, it's just your own fault if you didn't listen. There's little better than the sound of appalled and disgusted laughter in a cinema and you'll hear plenty of it here during the finale. Oh and by the way, if you are a fan of This Is Spinal Tap you'll get a huge kick of out this film's use of domestic servants. Ouch.

If you like your comedy with a side order of gore go and see this. If you like your horror with a dose of hilarity you should definitely go and see this. Out in cinemas right now.