*Warning: major spoilers ahead!*
Ready or Not was not a movie I was planning to see. The trailers were all over YouTube and Instagram, and I was kind of curious, but honestly, I thought it looked a little too dumb to justify going out of my way to watch it in theaters. But when a group of friends decided to check it out, I went too, and this movie really surprised me. It was so much better than I expected. It was totally bizarre, but also hilarious, exciting, and scary, and all the actors, especially Samara Weaving, killed it.
Weaving stars as Grace, a young bride who has married Alex Le Domas, heir to an eccentric, wealthy family who made their fortune manufacturing board games. To officially join the family, she must take part in the tradition of pulling a card from an ancient box and playing the game listed on it. What she doesn’t know is that there is one unlucky option – if she pulls “hide and seek”, the entire family must hunt her down and kill her before dawn as part of a literal deal with the Devil they made generations ago. If the bride survives the night, they believe that the Le Domas line will be wiped out. Of course, Grace pulls that card, and the deadly game begins.
It’s a weird, over-the-top premise for sure, and the movie leans into the goofiness while also taking its plotline just seriously enough to grab your investment. Grace is so real and likable that you can’t help but be on the edge of your seat watching her dodge crossbows and sprint across the beautiful, manicured estate – a purposeful contrast to the brutality hiding within the beautiful, manicured family. And Grace is far more than just a pretty face whose only character trait is screaming in mortal terror. The reveal early in the film that Grace grew up in foster homes adds a tragic irony to the terror she experiences. Finding out that you’ve married into a clan of Satan worshippers who sincerely believe they must sacrifice you is jarring enough, but for a girl who only wanted a family of her own, the situation is even more painful.
But you know what? The more I thought about it, the more I realized the overlying premise is not the scariest part of this movie. That honor goes to Grace’s husband, Alex.
Alex doesn’t start out as a threatening figure. At first, he’s arguably a deuteragonist alongside Grace, facing his own character arc about standing up to his family. His biggest fault, in the beginning, is his cowardice in not telling Grace about the possible fate awaiting her, instead choosing to hope that she’ll pick a different card. But he does try to help her escape when his worst nightmare comes true. Even with his heroic efforts, it’s not easy for the audience to really like Alex – if he truly loved Grace, couldn’t he have just not married her and avoided putting her in harm’s way at all? Even Alex’s argument that she would have left him if he didn’t propose doesn’t really work. If you love her, let her go…and all that. But he was still kind of sympathetic, at least to me. Alex was obviously raised in a really, really screwed up family, and when his mother confronts him about his disloyalty, Alex seems ready to completely reject the Le Domas legacy. Grace, he declares, brings him normality. She makes him feel like a good person. He thinks the legend about his ancestor’s pact with the Devil is bull, and he will choose Grace over his mother every time. It almost makes up for his selfish decision to marry Grace in the first place. Kind of.
But ultimately, Alex isn’t as different from his family as he thinks. When he escapes his handcuffs and finds Grace only for her to back away from him, Alex becomes Ready or Not‘s true villain. Aloud, he realizes that even if she survives, Grace will not stay with him. He yells for the rest of his family, and the next thing we know, Grace is tied to a table, her husband about to stab her through the heart.
It’s pretty shocking, especially after all the build-up about Alex rejecting his weird Satanic past. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. When Alex talks about why he loves Grace, he doesn’t admire anything about her, not her humor or her resilience or her authenticity. He only loves the way she makes him feel, and that means his love for her only lasts as long as she feeds his ego and slaps a band-aid on his trauma. The fact that he married her even though she could literally die proves his desire to possess her outweighed any genuine love.
The rest of the family is terrifying, sure, but their feud with Grace isn’t personal. They just genuinely believe the Devil will destroy them if they let her live. Alex, on the other hand, has a much more ordinary motivation. The girl he wants rejected him, so now he wants to kill her. The scariest part is that this kind of selfishness is one that’s much easier to find outside the movies.
Alex and Grace’s ill-fated relationship is more chilling to me than all the other weirdness that goes on in this film. One of the moments I remember most is when Grace is tied down and her crazy in-laws are gleefully yelling “Hail Satan!”, and the camera flips to show us Alex whisper “Hail Satan” from Grace’s point of view, quiet enough for her ears only. He’s not saying it because he believes it, he’s saying it to hurt her. And that’s kind of every girl’s deepest fear about relationships, right? That you’ll let someone get close, but then it turns out that you don’t really know them, after all – and now they’re close enough to hurt you. Of course, most boys aren’t hiding any murderous instincts, much less a whole Satanic cult. But too many, it seems, are hiding a deep-rooted entitlement, disrespect, and inability to see women as people.
Luckily, the girl is able to save herself in this story. There was something so satisfying about seeing Grace throw her wedding ring back at Alex as the Devil took him, despite his protests that he wasn’t really like the rest of his family. And he wasn’t, not quite – but his brand of evil, while more banal, was evil just the same.
Ready or Not is a crazy movie, and it’s supposed to be. It’s not flawless, but it sure as hell is entertaining. And as ridiculous and fun as it is, it does tap into deeper fears we can all relate to. Alex Le Domas is every bland, privileged, egocentric bro who thinks a girl owes him everything. But Grace is the absolute badass we all can be. Whether your man isn’t respecting your wishes or his family is literally trying to sacrifice you on an altar, know your worth, ladies. Because ready or not, we’ll all have to face a guy who will hurt us. And with any luck, we’ll survive him, too.