Review: Perfect Ready or Not is a sharp and spiritual delicacy soaked in blood

An unsuspecting bride finds herself fighting for her life on her wedding night at Ready not ready, a terribly funny and blood soaked thriller that made its world premiere last month at the Fantasia International Film Festival in Toronto. I was on board in principle by the time the first trailer fell in June, but good trailers do not always indicate a good movie. Fortunately, Ready not ready at the height of his caravan.

(Some spoilers below.)

Grace (Samara Weaving, Picnic at the suspended rock) can not believe her luck when she falls in love with Alex Le Domas (Mark O & # 39; Brien, Stop and catch the fire), a member of a rich dynasty of games – although the family prefers the term "dominion". After a perfect wedding on the family estate, Alex informs Grace that there remains only one formality to observe: "At midnight you have to play a game. It's just something that we do when someone joins the family. " The new family member must draw a card in a mysterious box to know which game he will play.

Grace draws, hide and seek, the worst card possible. This is because, as the family plays The Domas, she has less in common with the hobby of an innocent child and more with the classic story of 1924, "The game the more dangerous". Grace is the prey and it must escape detection until dawn to avoid being killed in a weird ritual sacrifice.

"They think they have to kill you before sunrise or something very serious is going to happen to the family," Alex explains apologetically. This has something to do with a mysterious personality called Mister Le Bail, who has made an agreement with the father-in-law of the Domas family several generations ago. He would give the family great wealth in return for the occasional blood sacrifice. Goats are usually enough, but the hide and seek card requires human sacrifice. It's probably absurd, of course, but the Domas family does not take any chances.

Unfortunately for them, Grace turns out to be a formidable opponent although she is "just a blonde branch", like her new stepfather Tony (Henry Czerny, Sharp objects, Quantico) the call. The fact that his new parents-in-law have a shocking incompetence compared to the old weapons that the family tradition has dictated to them helps to solve it. Emilie Le Domas (Melanie Scrofano, Wynonna Earp) continues to shoot girls by mistake. ("Does she look like wearing a giant wedding dress?")

Grace seems to have Alex at his side: he still remembers the trauma of his childhood watching family matriarch Helene Dumas (Nicky Guadagni, Lars and the real girl) protest in tears as her new husband, the love of his life, is dragged to the altar of sacrifice. Alex's perpetually intoxicating older brother, Daniel (Adam Brody, Jennifer's body, Shazam!), is also sympathetic to Grace's fate but lacks the will to intervene. His own wife, Charity (Elyse Levesque, Stargate Universe), does not have such feelings, joining the hunt with sadistic joy. And while Grace's new mother-in-law, Becky (Andie MacDowell, Groundhog Day, Four Weddings and a Funeral) very much like his son's new wife, she will always put the family tradition in the foreground.

Ready not ready gets the right tone, balanced between humor and horror Moments like Emilie's husband, Fitch Bradley (Kristian Bruun, Black Orphan), watch YouTube videos about "Getting to know your crossbow", give a little comic relief and make these really shocking bloody turns all the more effective. The pace is clear, the story is tight, it is really suspensive and the whole of the distribution clearly amuses in its respective roles.

The relative newcomer Samara Weaving in particular delivers a remarkable performance as Grace, which requires her to be, in turn, gentle, subdued, shocked and terrified, and that she be tough in the fight for his life. Her wedding dress reflects the inner journey of her character, beginning virgin and increasingly torn and stained with blood and blood as her wedding night progresses. Depending on the feature built-in below, the production team has designed 17 different versions of this dress for Weaving, including an incarnation with "as many goat carcasses that you can not even imagine".

The end of August is generally a relatively gloomy landscape with regard to cinematographic supply, with most major studios holding major releases for the fall. Ready not ready brings a welcome bit of welcome to those dog days of summer.