Here comes the bride…with a shotgun.
BQB here with a review of the sleeper hit “Ready or Not.”
3.5 readers, I love it when I am pleasantly surprised. Somehow this flick slipped under my radar and frankly, it scooched by the rest of the world without much fanfare even though it is fantastic. It’s thrilling, chilling, scary and though you wouldn’t think so, it’s also hilarious.
Samara Weaving stars as Grace, a woman from humble beginnings as a foster child who believes her dreams of being part of a family have finally come true when she marries Alex (Mark O’Brien).
Grace is in it for love, but on the day of the wedding she finds she’ll have to navigate her way through becoming the newest member of Le Domas family, a mega rich clan who built their fortune on board games.
I’m loathe to say that the Le Domases are creepy and kooky, but they are odd and eccentric and view all newcomers with suspicion.
Moreover, they have a strange yet seemingly harmless tradition. Every wedding night, they insist the new member of the family draw a card from a box. Each card contains the name of a game and past brides/grooms have been lucky enough to get away with a rousing game of chess or Old Maid.
Alas, Grace draws the hide and seek card and tradition dictates that when the bride hides, she is sought…with axes, crossbows, old timey blunderbuss-like guns and other weapons that were once owned by the family’s great grandpa and builder of the family moolah.
I can’t really get into the specifics of how or why the family goes on a hunt but it’s all part of the mystery that eventually plays out, to scary and silly extremes.
The humor comes into play when we realize that the Le Domases are rather incompetent killers. They’ve lived pampered lives and the hide and seek card is only pulled, at best, once a generation or so, thus they are out of practice and ill-prepared. Meanwhile, Grace wants to live, causing the hunters to become the hunted.
Marriage, in-law infighting, adherence to old customs and the strange habits of the uber rich are all pilloried as we root for Grace to put some heads on her wall.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy. It came and went pretty quietly in theaters, but I could see this becoming a cult classic over time.
Bookshelf Battle 