Category: Good

Messages and Meaning

Ready or Not: Here I Come focuses much more on entertainment and action than on meaning. The usual clichéd take on class division, the obsessive struggle for power, and the message that we can only succeed if we work together. Positive messages, but at a fourth-grade level. Still, for what it is, the film puts you in a good mood and doesn’t say anything wrong.

Plot

The plot is impressively consistent in its refusal to be original. A satanic cult rules the world. A manhunt. The good guys have problems and will solve them when faced with mortal danger. The victim turns the tables and becomes the predator. People exploding for comedic effect. Privileged rich people are too wimpy to handle reality. All things we’ve seen a thousand times over the past ten years.

Still, we can assume that the story’s predictability is a deliberate effect, since the film’s goal is simply to be entertaining according to an established formula, rather than trying to offer us something new.

Characters

The characters remain entirely within the confines of the archetypes they represent.

Grace – Grace is a typical character in contemporary cinema, but Samara Weaving’s performance adds enough nuance to make her compelling.

Important details

• The scene showing that the ring-bearer rules the world is pretty silly. No matter how powerful you are, a few seconds isn’t enough for your command to make it onto the news. And Satan’s deputy rules by… watching the news and making phone calls? Seriously?

• Sarah Michelle Gellar had to work with a shockingly dull character, and it’s a shame they didn’t give her more.

• The fight between the two blinded women was great and definitely the best scene in the movie