Ready or Not (2019)

Summary: The wedding of Grace and Alex takes place, and she is told that at midnight she, as a new family member is to participate in the choice of a game she is to join the family in playing. The family are successful game manufacturers, and must follow this ritual in order to fulfil a devilish agreement one of their ancestors made, on which their success depends. The game chosen using a secret box is “Hide and Seek” which Grace finds out is a deadly event, where she is to hide and if discovered will be ritually sacrificed. She hides, but witnesses one of the maids being killed in mistake for her, and from then on it is up to her to attempt to survive, sometimes with just a bit of assistance from members of the family, particularly her husband. Fortunately for her, the family are not really on the case, other servants are accidentally killed,  and she is shot through the hand, but will she survive?

Content: There is no sex or nudity but some drug taking, drinking and smoking.  There is a scene from 30 years before when a previous Hide and Seek had taken place, resulting in a man being skewered with an arrow. We get the impression that in the intervening years less deadly games were chosen. The first three casualties are the three maids who die gruesomely. Grace is chased by the butler and at one point it seems that she will escape in a car, but its security system shuts it down. Her wedding dress which starts off as immaculate white, gradually becomes more distressed and dishevelled.

A View: I had heard about this movie back when it was on general release, so was pleased when it turned up on our TV. It was a low budget outing which made, relatively, a lot of money, and was well liked by the critics. The viewing population not quite so much. It would have been easy to have given Grace some special skills, but they did not, only equipping her with steely determination to survive. I would recommend it for those who like a bit of a comedy bloodfest. It is just a bit difficult to categorise this outing, but it is generally though to be a “horror comedy”. Others which could be similarly categorised include: Escape Room, Elevator and the first of the genre Scream.