WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Ready or Not, in theaters now.
Ready or Not is one of the year's most surprising horrors; a mix of gore, psychological thriller and black comedy. As it unravels Grace's (Samara Weaving) journey, she quickly goes from newlywed to a bride being hunted by her husband's family, the Le Domases, on her wedding night.
As Grace looks to turn the table and move from prey to predator, though, the movie produces some very shocking moments and quite a few grotesque kills along the way.
CLUMSY EMILIE
The Le Domas family starts hunting Grace after she pulls a death card (hide-and-seek) in a ritual, much to the chagrin of her husband, Alex (Mark O'Brien), who's left trying to figure out a way to get her out to this. However, when his sister, Emilie (Melanie Scrofano), gets armed, the night's proceedings get really crazy as she accidentally kills a couple of the maids in the most brutal yet accidental fashion.
The first one she kills, mistaking her for Grace in a bedroom, by blowing her brains out in a graphic scene. It's nonsensical because the maid's in black and not a white wedding dress, but Emilie is heavily under the influence of different drugs by this point. When her parents give her a crossbow after she loses her gun, she immediately fumbles and puts an arrow through the head of a second maid, reiterating she's as deadly as she is clumsy. This maid then gets beheaded by the family to compound the misfortune of the staff on the night.
THE BIG CRUSH
Grace is left scouring the mansion looking for spots to hide in when she stumbles upon a secret chamber in a wall. However, the final maid is in it and when she finds out from Grace that only the bride's being hunted, the maid betrays Grace and yells, trying to give away her position. Grace panics and her arm hits the switch, which closes the automatic door down on the maid.
Grace tries to undo her actions but the door crushes the spine of the maid, whose body was sticking out as if she were looking through a doggy door. You can't help but grimace as you hear her bones cracking, with blood gurgling out her mouth, too. It's a fatality befitting the Mortal Kombat franchise, and while Grace is upset, it really is the ultimate karma for being so traitorous .
MOMMY DEAREST
Alex's mom, Becky (Andie MacDowell), was nice to Grace early on, but to maintain her family's wealth, she has to take her daughter-in-law down so they can sacrifice her to Satan. Eventually, they confront each other in the ritual room but Grace gets the upper hand when she finds the relic box containing the card she pulled.
Grace knocks Becky down and proceeds to smash the box into her skull repeatedly. It's intense and quite squeamish as you see the matriarch's head getting bashed in. This is another graphic scene the film doesn't hold back on and Grace vents, screaming and letting all her anger out as she did think Becky might help her at some point. Sadly, she's left disappointed that as an outsider who married into the family too, Becky didn't care for her.
THE HAND AND THE HOLE
Grace flees to the Le Domas stable, only for Emilie's son to blow a hole through her hand with a pistol. She knocks the kid out but falls through a wooden door in the floor and into a crypt with the victims of past hunts. Grace tries to climb out, but as the ladder breaks she's left to hold on to a nail atop it. She doesn't have any leverage, however, as the rungs are gone and she needs to improvise.
Grace slams her hand down on the top of the ladder after climbing up, and it goes straight through a nail. She uses this to basically hook herself to the top so she can pull her body to safety. But as she's literally hanging by her hand, it becomes one of the movie's most painful scenes as she pivots on this, with her entire body weight threatening to pull her down and split her hand open. Luckily, this doesn't happen but as she crawls out of the hole to safety, she loses use of this hand.
THE EXPLODING FAMILY
The family fails to kill Grace by dawn, which is a requirement of the hunt. She's way more resilient and combative than first assumed, even overcoming Alex, who turned on his spouse after seeing his mother's head bashed in. They think they're safe, however, as nothing happens to them, and just when they decide to kill Grace for fun, they start exploding one by one.
Guts and entrails get splattered all over Grace, turning her dress dark red, with Alex being the last one to blow up as she calls for a divorce. The most shocking death, though, are Emilie's two kids who blow up trying to run away. Films usually shy away from children's deaths, but here, they too are splattered all over the wall.
Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett and starring Samara Weaving, Mark O'Brien, Adam Brody, Henry Czerny, Andie MacDowell, Kristian Bruun, Melanie Scrofano, Nicky Guadagni and Elyse Levesque, Ready Or Not is in theaters now.