Ready or Not 2 is a completely unnecessary movie; we know this already. Disregarding that fact, this also represents the epitome of an inoffensive sequel. It hits all the beats, retreads the same steps as the first movie, and manufactures a weak continuation and elevation of the stakes of this story - one which never intended any further elaboration. This is essentially the same movie, except "more". But "more" doesn't always mean better.
While trying to elevate the stakes and the devil worship, high society oligarch satire, they ended up creating a caricature of that first movie, ultimately mixing up an ugly mess of 'one-note' characters and souring audiences' perception of the original by proxy. So this begs the question, why would they even bother with this movie?
Of course, it always comes back to money. Not only did the original Ready or Not gross over $57 million worldwide, receiving almost 10x its budget, but it also garnered wide success after its October 2021 release on Disney+, two years after its initial release. This movie is exactly what you'd call a 'modern cult classic'. With that kind of success for an original IP, it was only a matter of time before it was resurrected from the dead and forced to push any semblance of life out of this original idea, before keeling over once again. Along came Ready or Not: Here I Come.
Moving on to the movie itself, absolutely nothing stands out. Yes, there were a few good moments of action, but that's all it really was. After audiences know what happens to these billionaires at the climax of the first movie, the studio assumes they expect more of just that moment. This led to them continually trying to have 'third-act-worthy' moments throughout the entire runtime, making it less and less interesting or fun to watch than the first time. So many explosions of guts just made it all feel like noise.
In terms of the acting, there was no real highlight, which is surprising given the stacked cast. Ironically, the highlight may even be Kevin Durand, who made excellent use of his 30 seconds of screentime. Otherwise, Samara Weaving gave her expected low-level Scream Queen energy - even when many of the screams were quite unnecessary. Kathryn Newton was simply there and had no other relevance. She never really added much or even had much of a character aside from anybody else she's played. I find that, unless given a special script like Lisa Frankenstein, she often ends up just becoming the cocky, wisecracking early-20s girl who ends up surprising us all by being a badass. The same character analysis can be said for Elijah Wood; however, blankness was exactly what his character called for.
As far as the story goes, this is pretty much the same as the first movie, except with manufactured higher stakes, and we know exactly how the movie will go. They do the general hide-and-seek, just with a bigger compound and more 'wacky' characters that, most of the time, add nothing except runtime. They also try to add some sort of relationship between the two sisters, yet never flesh it out further than them hating each other but secretly missing each other.
These 'wacky characters' really just feel like they can be summed up in one sentence each, sometimes even a maximum of three words. For example, two siblings fighting over one seat, one of whom is crazy. A woman who doesn't want to kill the main characters. A crazy guy. A Latin guy. A vengeful Latin woman. And finally, children.
Most of the first 30 minutes were almost entirely comprised of exposition, which, of course, is an important part of storytelling, but they don't even try to hide it here. There's a full scene of Samara Weaving just giving her sister a synopsis of the first movie, just in case you either hadn't seen it before watching the sequel or watched it on Disney+ and were on your phone the entire time. These exposition dumps are no more obvious than the mere existence of Elijah Wood's character, The Lawyer. Especially before the game starts, he comes off as simply an exposition device and nothing more.
Finally, this movie was not only completely unnecessary but also a shame to be linked with its predecessor. That's not even mentioning the third act, in which the main characters escape by making everybody else simply jump into a pit, before saying hi to Satan first, of course. And was it really a good idea to release a movie about devil-worshipping oligarchs with no regard for the working class's lives at this time?