Those Wacky Satanic Cultists
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come
Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett.
Theatrical release March 20, 2026.
They Will Kill You
Directed by Kirill Sokolov.
Theatrical release March 27, 2026.
When dealing with movies, your friendly correspondent prefers to devote his limited space to exceptional work. Sometimes, as with his last entry’s focus on the half-assed rabid-chimp film Primate, there’s nevertheless sufficient material in the phenomenon alone. This time out we have something else: Two kinetic theatrical films released only one week apart that are interesting because they are to a stunning extent largely the same movie, down to the menace, the nature of the protagonists who are forced to confront it, their angst, and the thin layer of socioeconomic injustice over satanist villainy that fuels them both.
Both movies are essentially wild splatstick comedies, with a focus on gore that extends to exploding heads in both. Both take place in the compounds of the uber-wealthy. Both have villains granted favored status by the actual Devil. Both feature young women who prove difficult to kill, and who must be hunted by the cult as part of an all-important sacrificial ceremony. Both have estranged younger sisters who deeply resent them for abandonment, an issue that is more or less resolved by just how well the older sister commits herself to fighting off cult members. Both largely take place over the course of one night, both tease a surrender at a ceremony near the end, and both feature a last-minute reversal.
The congruence is not exactly difficult to see.
In theatres, the red-band trailers to both films played back to back, leading to one confused guy among the audience members in one of many showings I saw it to exclaim, “Dude! This is like the same trailer as the last movie!” That fella, whoever he is, is like a spiritual brother to me, and you can attribute to him the inspiration for our project today. I repeat: The two movies came one week apart.
The first film was Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, which you will not be surprised to find out is a sequel to Ready Or Not, in which Grace (Samara Weaving) married into a family of squillionaires only to find out that the clan’s debt to the devil requires them to demand that all new family members play a randomly chosen game that, if it turns out to be hide-and-seek, requires them to hunt her down or face a horrible fate if she remains uncaught by dawn. As it happens, she was, and they all exploded, one after another, as the sun rises. In the sequel, she and her estranged sister Faith (Kathryn Newton) are dragged into the clutches of a new bunch of rich bastards (including Néstor Carbonell and Sarah Michelle Gellar), who are here given an all-important second chance to nail Grace, for the opportunity to a claim an all-important magic ring that will make whoever wears it the effective corporate Satanist ruler of the Earth.
So, aside from putting the girls in the position of having to defeat Batmanuel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, what else is here? Well, the previous wearer of the ring and secret ruler of the world (seen early on declaring when a certain pointless regional war will be over, as far as he’s concerned), the master of ceremonies who explains the rules and decides who gets the ring is played by Elijah Wood.
I repeat: Elijah Wood officiates at the ritual that decides who gets the ring that will grant awesome power but steal your soul. Think about it. It will come to you.
There’s also a lot of cartoonish, if bloody, violence which includes Faith taking, and ultimately bouncing back from, an extended beating that should end with the fracturing of most of the bones in her face. Pitched battles abound. There’s the fate of one simple-minded guy who, even with all this going on, can’t look up from his handheld video game. There’s a masterful exploitation of the rules by Grace. There’s some sisterly negotiation over what has estranged them. There are a lot of funny lines and ultimately a climax that arrives because, you know, enough minutes have been expended in the interim. A low B, I think.
Released one week later is They Will Kill You, starring Zazie Beetz as Asia, an ex-con who takes a job at a sus high-end hotel known as the Virgil, where she has been led to believe her younger sister Maria is now working as a maid. She is “enjoying” her first night there when a group of motley residents who include Tom Felton and Heather Graham enter in masks and robes and try to corral her for a sacrifice. Patricia Arquette is the hotel manager and Paterson Joseph is her disapproving husband. It turns out, of course, that the Virgil (nice reference, guys) is owned by the devil, and that all the rich-folk residents of what does not look like a residence for billionaires have sold their souls for eternal life.
As you can predict, Asia will eventually run into her sister, who has abandonment issues. The action will occasionally pause so that this can be discussed in achingly sincere scenes that are not at all like the Sam Raimi-esque, close-up gore that characterizes the rest of it. Also as you can guess, the entirety includes may vicious slaps at rich idiots. The action is bloodier and sillier, genuinely Looney-Tunes in wackiness, if, you know, Yosemite Sam and Elmer Fudd became bloody messes more often than they did. It helps that this particular band of evil cultists cannot be killed; they regenerate all damage, even if that means that Heather Graham shows up at one point with a head still in the process of regrowing and, for the moment, about the size of apple. For one extended period an eyeball she’s lost inches along a tunnel, trailing an optic nerve, and if you can’t guess that at one point Asia will angrily squish it, you’re simply no good at this kind of thing. Ultimately, of course, it all ends in a ceremony where Asia prevails by, you know, using the rules against the cult.
I liked this one a bit more than its immediate predecessor, in part because director Kirill Sokolov choreographs it all with a camera that never stops moving, a trait that can be exhausting but which works just fine too. I also praise Zazie Beetz, who has been in a few films already but whose angry stare here marks her character as a force of nature that even the devil should never mess with. Alas, Tom Felton does not enjoy as much of a resonance, channeling his prior turns as Draco Malfoy, as Sarah Michelle Gellar does, as a sorta-kinda mix of her Buffy and Cruel Intentions personas. A minor issue.
I will not claim masterpiece status. I know plenty of horror-averse people who will point out the reasons both suck, in large part because it’s, you know, sick and disgusting. What I will say, for those who will be open to both because this is the kind of thing that will be open to—a syllogism, but, hey, both films are syllogisms—is that I enjoyed seeing Ready or Not 2 the single time that curiosity merited, and am confident that I’ve sucked as much amused enjoyment out of it as I’m ever going to, and I think I will be returning to They’re Going to Kill You before long, in part to return to the cleverness of its set-pieces. The massive fights in the hotel room and in the hallway are grindhouse gold. Really.
