Brides and Bullets
Brides and Bullets
Of Games, Ghouls and Guffaws
Thursday, October 3, 2019
Stay Single
Ready Or Not (2019)
Imagine if your in-laws smoked. Or ate a lot of bacon. Or liked the Cubs.
All these scenarios would be horrible and would make some of us rethink our marriage. Or at least we would celebrate holidays separately.
Now imagine your new in-laws want to kill you. That’s bad. And, when it’s a movie, it’s also very funny. Certainly in Ready Or Not it is.
Samara Weaving (whom we knew so little about before this movie that we actually thought we knew nothing about but now we love and adore her) plays Grace who marries Daniel and is thus thrust into his very wealthy and very eccentric family.
This family made its fortune over the decades by making games. Hide and seek is not a game you need to buy but that doesn’t matter. It’s the best game of all, especially when the hider has no idea the seekers are trying to kill her and the seekers are at once determined, disgusted, frightened, hesitant, pitiful and uproariously funny.
This movie gets it right. This movie is scary and violent and ridiculous and unapologetic and one gets the impression that the writers - Guy Busick and Ryan Murphy, the directors – Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett and this amazing cast which also features Andie McDowell, Henry Czerny and another of our new favorites, Kristian Bruun, kept in mind at every step that this film will not look back, will not be sorry and will not fail to make you laugh your ass off.
“Holy Dick!” Who says that? Andie McDowell does.
“Oh Cock!” Is that an expression? It is when these maniacs say it.
A grown woman punches a young boy in the face. And it’s funny.
A maid gets an arrow in the eye. And it’s perfect.
An old lady looks and behaves like Linda Blair from The Exorcist if she had stayed possessed until her 70s. And it’s awesome.
And this very silly and quite charming film also poses one of the most poignant questions we have heard on film in a long time and is delivered in a way that is more believable and heartbreaking than the most tense moments in many celebrated dramas.
It’s a question about family. It’s a question about tradition.
It’s a question about what we are willing to do when no one tells us not to.
It’s a heart-wrenching moment of solemnity and reflection amid an inferno of folly.
It’s what we need more of in movies. And outside of them. It’s laughter and boldness. It’s hiding in a big house, laughing at our fear, but knowing even the funniest moments come from something horrible.
It’s more than a game. --TK
Thursday, October 3, 2019