The Newlywed Game

Sometimes, you reach a point that you look at yourself with pride in recognizing how well you're living your life. Then you realize you missed the chance to spend your wedding night playing a Clue-meets-The Most Dangerous Game version of hide-and-seek and you wonder if your marriage is even valid.

Quick Plot: A gloriously chaotic prologue hints at a very deadly game of hide and seek, with young Daniel hiding his little brother Alex before all out Invasion of the Body Snatchers 1978-ing the hider, a tuxedoed groom about to meet a grisly fate.

Cut to 30 years later, when little Alex Le Domas is all grown up and getting hitched to Grace. Where Alex comes from an esteemed family who built their immense wealth on the gaming industry, Grace grew up in foster homes, never knowing what it meant to belong. Her wedding day is edgy but successful, as expensively dressed in-law after expensively dressed in-law welcomes her to her new clan.

Of course, like any marriage ritual, there are important aspects of tradition that must be honored. In the case of the Le Domas estate, no new entry into the family is accepted until he or she plays a game at the stroke of midnight. It could be an innocent round of checkers or old maid, but if the newlywed draws the “hide or seek” card, the evening gets a tad more complicated…as in, the entire family must catch the hider and sacrifice him or her to their ancestor before the sun rises.

Hey, I planned a wedding: sh*t gets intense.

Grace wastes no time accepting just how dire her situation is, and while Alex is doing his best to help save his new wife, an entire armed extended family with their own lives on the line is indeed a force to be reckoned with. Thankfully, they’re stuck using antiquated weaponry and in some cases, limited by a long day’s worth of cocaine and whiskey. Still, Grace has her work cut out for her.

For all the years of horror fans grumbling about remakes and unwanted sequels, what a fine age to be living in when we get a fairly steady flow of theatrically released genre films built on original premises. Based on a screenplay by Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy and directed by Southbound (and to less exciting extent, The Devil’s Due)’s Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, Ready Or Not has a fresh energy met well by its quick pacing.

The cast certainly helps. With The Babysitter, Mayhem, and the mixed (but well-acted) Picnic At Hanging Rock miniseries to her name, Samara Weaving has quickly built a wonderfully genre-heavy resume, and with Ready Or Not, she deserves the most bloodily bedazzled crown fit for an official scream queen. We don't know much about Grace's past (or even present, marital status aside), but it's impossible not to be on her side. This is the refreshingly smart and gloriously sarcastic leading lady we deserve.

Likewise, Ready Or Not is stacked with some wonderful supporting turns. Cube's Nicky Guadagni's Aunt Helene is a glorious creation, while Melanie Scrofano's overly competitive Emilie (NOT A CHARACTER I IDENTIFY WITH AT ALL) brings a wonderfully manic energy to the proceedings. On the slightly more serious end, Adam Brody's Daniel gets a surprising arc, while Andie MacDowell's manages to create a full character history with just a few quick conversations as Grace's sympathetic-to-a-point mother-in-law. It's a genuine delight to watch this family unravel.

Ready Or Not will probably make you laugh more than jump, but it's still an incredibly satisfying genre film. For the most part, Bettinelli-Olpuin and Gillett treat the material with a smart weight. Real lives--and a family dynasty--are at stake, making most of the hunt feel heavy even when its rich, often airheaded villains end up bumbling fools. It's quite a smart tone, especially for a wide theatrical release.

High Points

Is there a contract with the devil somewhere in your antique weapons closet that keeps Samara Weaving acting in horror movies for eternity? Also, do you have a pen?

Low Points
Look, I’m not saying I didn’t laugh when the Robert Palmer-looking maids met their unlucky fates, but there is a certain level of cruelty that might have deserved a little more of a commentary

Lessons Learned
In case you’ve never seen a horror film set in a Victorian mansion, allow me to confirm that dumbwaiters are never safe spaces

Always pack a comfortable, quiet pair of sneakers for whatever may come up on your honeymoon

Never trust a wealthy child

Hide/Seek

I had a darn good time with Ready Or Not, and would encourage any horror fan who wants to support creative, quality genre fare to buy a ticket. 

Rosemary's Less Interesting Baby

When making a horror movie in found footage stye, ask yourself a question:

Why?

I don’t mean that as an accusatory “found footage SUCKS!” declaration. I’ve liked and loved many a film made in that style, be it the powerful Megan Is Missing or the surprisingly fun The Visit. The subgenre itself is not a problem. The reasoning behind it, however, often is. 

Quick Plot: Sam and Zach McCall are an attractive and madly in love young couple enjoying their honeymoon in the Dominican Republic. On their last night there, they visit a shady palm reader who sees doom and death in Sam’s future. 

As all palm readers in horror movies do.

The McCalls hail a cab driven by a friendly and eager local who convinces them to hit one last nightclub before they go home. Naturally, said trip is a setup to get the couple wasted enough that a satanic cult can impregnate Sam with an evil spawn. 

Like I’m not telling you anything you didn’t know. Have you READ a travel book?

Back home, Sam and Zach are excited to welcome the new addition to their family...at first. It doesn’t take long for the vegetarian mom-to-be to start craving raw meat, getting massive nose bleeds, and causing her priest to have a demonic stroke in the middle of communion.

Thankfully, Zach has been documenting the entire process because like most of the young men starring in horror movies made during the 21st century, Zach really likes to hold a camera, record hundreds of hours of footage, and never watch a single frame. When he finally sits down to show his friends what his camera has caught, the footage disappears.

So I ask you: why the hell was this made as a found footage film?

In general, found footage is a choice that’s typically used to put the main characters closer to the point of view of the audience. You can shake your camera all you want if your viewers are fully in place. Other films, such as Meadowoods, might use the gimmick just because it works better with capturing a certain aspect of its characters or story.

Then there’s Devil’s Due.

I’d like to cite an IMDB trivia tidbit that might explain some of my bafflement with this movie:

The decision was made by the filmmakers to move the movie away from the previous "found footage" tropes (such as the use of a framing device, a linear narrative and a non-recognizable cast) and into a story "told through cameras that exist in the world of the characters" much like Chronicle. This is demonstrated throughout, including the deliberate absence of a framing device, the use of an animated opening quote, a recognizable cast, a non-chronological narrative structure and a final music cue that is playing in the taxi becomes the end-credits song.

So. We’re going to make our movie in found footage style, but we’re not going to make it that way for any reason whatsoever. We’re going to ask our audience to watch a movie heavy with shaky cam antics because, well, we’re doing something different. We’re going to throw alternate viewpoints that couldn’t possibly come from any recording device during or big finale because, well, we’re not following the rules of found footage so we don’t have to explain ourselves in any way.

Huh?

Look, I’m in no way saying a movie can’t do its own thing. If you want to follow a found footage format for your first hour and switch to a standard narrative, that’s just FINE, District 9. But what co-directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (they of one of the mediocre V/H/S segments) do is simply mind bogglingly stupid. Why hamper your filmmaking with restrictions that do nothing to enhance the experience for your audience? Devil’s Due was probably never going to be a great movie, but as a straight narrative film, it might have at least have been watchable. Instead, the decision to show it as a collage of security cameras and cell phone video just makes it, well, pretty crappy.

High Points

They don’t get much at all to work with, but  the lead actors (Allison Miller and Friday Night Lights' Zach Gilford) are quite natural and do their best

Low Points

Aside from the many aforementioned drawbacks of found footage filmmaking, perhaps the most annoying and ubiquitous is how every male holding a camera has to, at a key moment, default into a chorus of “what the f#ck”

Lessons Learned

No matter how much you’re getting tossed around a forest like a frisbee by a cow-eating satanist, never, ever never, I really do mean never, drop your videocamera

The friendlier the cab driver, the higher the probability that he’s a satanist

Satanic pregnancy due date predictions are shockingly accurate

Rent/Bury/Buy

Devil’s Due might be of interest to those fascinated by pregnancy horror or found footage experts curious to see a new method of misusing the format. At 90 minutes, it won’t kill your kill your will to live, but considering how many better movies there are out there, why bother?