The first time Grace has the inclination to scream, she suppresses it. She’s hiding in the sprawling mansion owned by her new husband’s family, and she’s just realized that the game of hide and seek they’re playing is actually an elaborate Satanic ritual in which she’s meant to be sacrificed. If she’d screamed, she would have been discovered and killed, but her survival instincts are impeccable from the moment she understands she’s in danger.
Those instincts made Grace an all-time great horror movie final girl, and Ready or Not, which was released five years ago this week, announced actress Samara Weaving as a top-tier scream queen. Grace lets out plenty of visceral screams as she fights for her life against the wealthy, entitled Le Domas family, although they’re just as often expressions of fury as they are of terror. Weaving brings out Grace’s inner ferocity, taking her from would-be victim to righteous avenger in the movie’s twisted version of class warfare.
Ready or Not opens with a prologue that hints at the Le Domas family’s diabolical secrets, as another young newlywed is hunted and killed on his own wedding night. Thirty years later, Grace is getting ready to marry Alex Le Domas (Mark O’Brien), who was just a child when his family slaughtered his aunt’s groom. Alex has kept Grace in the dark about his family’s pact with the evil entity they call Mr. Le Bail, although he cryptically offers her the chance to back out just before they exchange vows on the grounds of the family estate. “No, thank you,” she says. “I’m all the way in.”
Grace has no idea what she’s agreeing to, but her enthusiasm translates to her battle for survival, which she approaches with the same can-do, laissez-faire attitude. She rolls with the seemingly benign weirdness of the ceremony, gathering around a table at midnight on the couple’s wedding night to draw a card from the sinister puzzle box that Bail bestowed upon Alex’s great-great-grandfather. The family made its fortune from selling board games, so it seems logical (if a bit silly) to initiate a new family member with a game.
Grace’s bemused laughter at the family traditions gets less confident as the process continues, especially when she sees the grim expressions on everyone’s faces after she draws a card marked “hide and seek.” Thanks to the family’s deal with Le Bail, anyone who picks that card must be sacrificed before dawn in order for the Le Domas dynasty to continue. The eager, trusting Grace heads off to find a hiding place, unaware of the violence to come.
She gets a harsh lesson after Alex tracks her down and orders her to stay hidden while he helps plan an escape. Alex’s cocaine-addled sister Emilie (Melanie Scrofano) accidentally kills a servant she mistakes for Grace, and reality suddenly sets in. Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett play many of those gruesome moments for laughs, but they never undercut the life-or-death stakes Grace faces. Weaving allows Grace’s sardonic humor to shine through even as she’s fighting to stay alive, and that humor helps her cope with the situation.
Grace’s determination and rage continue to erupt in Weaving’s primal screams as the movie progresses. She masks her pain with a scream when she impales her hand on a nail. She screams in anger at a passing motorist who ignores her pleas for help. And she reserves her most anguished scream for the moment when she truly understands her new husband’s betrayal.
Ready or Not is expertly cast, with Adam Brody and Henry Czerny giving particularly amusing performances as the privileged Le Domas men. Weaving is the main attraction, though, and she makes the most of the showcase, highlighting Grace not as the final girl but the only girl. She doesn’t outlast other victims — she’s the sole intended target, and she takes on an entire family of killers with a laugh and a snort. That’s something worth screaming about.
