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Ready Or Not is one of those films that looked amazing from the trailer and I hoped would not let me down when I saw it in full.
It’s also just 95 minutes, a length that so many films fail to achieve these days, since why have people sat down for around 90 minutes when almost 3 hours will do(!)
Ready Or Not has the crazy premise, as we see from the trailer, that when you’re marrying into this particular family dynasty (or “Dominion” as they like to call it), on the plus side they’re richer than astronauts, but on the downside, when it comes round to midnight on the evening of the wedding, they play a hunting game all around the huge mansion, and if the new addition to the family can survive they night, then they can… survive!
Grace (Samara Weaving) is about to marry into Alex’s (Mark O’Brien) family, and before we meet the pair, there’s a brief opener set 30 years earlier that gives a brief hint as to what’s to come.
In this film, when people get shot, there’s sometimes Airplane-style hilarity with the dead not quite being dead; it’s also brilliant to actually see an 18-rated movie being made as it’s such a rarity these days, and it certainly earns it with some great violent shots (pun not intended); plus, Aunt Helene (Nicky Guadagni) is scary AF, and overall, this is great fun, but also it’s completely hatstand!
Beyond that, I don’t want to say too much because it’s all about who will get capped next, when and where, and how long can the bride survive? Will she make it until the end?
And amongst the cast, I didn’t even recognise Henry Czerny at first, as Tony, the head of the family, but then it’s been around 25 years since I saw him, as Kittridge in the first (and best, to date) Mission Impossible film, and guess what… he’s rumoured to be back for MI7 in 2021! Cool! His character was great, and Ethan does need a telling off every now and then, especially for how ho-hum Mission Impossible: Fallout was.
And one brief post-credits thing…
The picture and the sound is spot-on for a modern movie, and there’s some decent extras included:
- Let The Games Begin: The Making of Ready Or Not (42:28): A three-part ‘making of’ with chat from the cast and crew, along with clips from the film. I’ve not had chance to watch the whole thing yet, but certainly will do as it’s clearly a lot more in-depth than most such extras on Blu-rays and DVDs. The three parts are spread out over four chapters (with part 2 getting two of them)
- Gag Reel (4:05): On set, the cast corpse amongst the corpses…
- Gallery: Two of them: On Set Photography (12 pics) and Le Domas Family Games (15 pics), the latter of which is concept art for the games that the family will have played over time, even though we, sadly, don’t see these acted out.
- Red Band Trailer (2:26): i.e. with all the effing and jeffing intact… (and you can see it above)
- Audio description: Does exactly what it says on the tin.
- Audio commentary: by Radio Silence and Samara Weaving
The menu mixes clips from the film with a short piece of the score, and chapters-wise, Fox knocks it out of the park with 32 on this disc for such a short film (compared to most films, these days). However, we need to talk about the subtitles…
Yes, there’s a ton of them, and I pride myself on listing them in full here, but… when going through the onscreen menus, a lot of them are in the text of their own language and I can’t decipher them all. Also, since I’m watching this on a PS4, I go into the PS4’s own menu system and a lot of them just state “Other”, which is no help.
So, you’d think the back of the box would be where to look, right? Wrong. It just states “English” for BOTH languages and subtitles, when there’s far more. I wish Fox would sort this out.
Ready Or Not is out now on Blu-ray, Amazon Video and DVD.
(click on the image for the full-sized version)
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FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS |
7.5 10 8 4 |
| OVERALL | 7.5 |
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 95 minutes
Studio: 20th Centry Fox Home Entertainment
Cat.no.: U095502BSP01
Year: 2019
Released: February 10th 2020
Chapters: 32
Picture: 1080p High Definition
Sound: English English DTS-MA 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1 (Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Hungarian and more. See notes above about this)
Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish, Portguese, Chinese, Czech, Greek, Hungarian, Korean, and more. See notes above about this.
Format: 2.35:1
Disc Format: BD50
Directors: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett
Producers: Bradley J Fischer, William Sherak, James Vanderbilt, Tripp Vinson
Screenplay: Guy Busick, R Christopher Murphy
Music: Brian Tyler
Cast:
Grace: Samara Weaving
Alex: Mark O’Brien
Daniel: Adam Brody
Tony: Henry Czerny
Becky: Andie MacDowell
Emilie: Melanie Scrofano
Fitch: Kristian Bruun
Charity: Elyse Levesque
Aunt Helene: Nicky Guadagni
Stevens: John Ralston
Georgie: Liam MacDonald
Gabe: Ethan Tavares
Clara: Hanneke Talbot
Tina: Celine Tsai
Dora: Daniela Barbosa
Young Alex: Chase Churchill
Young Daniel: Etienne Kellici
Charles: Andrew Anthony
Young Helene: Elana Dunkelman
Young Becky: Kate Ziegler
Masked Family Members: James Eddy, Adam Winlove-Smith
Police Officer: Alicia Richardson
Justin: Nat Faxon (voice)
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.