It’s been a long time since filmmakers Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett were at South by Southwest, or even in Austin: Back in 2012, as part of filmmaking collective Radio Silence, they contributed the segment “10/31/98” to anthology horror V/H/S. That film played as part of the Midnighters lineup, but now they’re rubbing shoulders with the Headliners for Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, the sequel to their 2019 feature debut, Ready or Not.
In that bloody action-horror-comedy, newlywed bride Grace (Samara Weaving) found herself in a deadly game of hide-and-seek with her new, stinking rich in-laws, who all turn out to be devil worshippers in the service of the enigmatic and infernal Mr. Le Bail.
The original ended with Grace, still in a blood-splattered bridal gown, on the steps of the family’s now-blazing mansion. Seven years later, the sequel picks up in exactly the same place. According to Gillett, that was always the idea, to come back to the same shot. “We really loved the audacity of, holy shit, we just put this character through the most insane 12 hours anybody could experience. All she needs is a break, somebody to talk to, to process what happened, and she doesn’t get that. She’s immediately thrown into this new game.”
The challenge now was to find a reason for a sequel. Bettinelli-Olpin said they were always eager to revisit both the story and the fun they had working with Weaving, who also stars in Jorma Taccone’s Over Your Dead Body, another SXSW Headliner. “She is a monster,” Bettinelli-Olpin said. “She’s so physical, and she’s also so emotional, so you get all these different layers.”
It’s how Weaving can balance the bone-crushing, face-smashing violence of the hunt with the over-the-top lunacy of Le Bail’s highly explosive manner of dealing with those that fail him. Gillett described those moments as “the punchline [which] allows us to make the very real, grounded violence that happens before those events feel much harder and much scarier.”
The first film’s success immediately sparked conversations of a sequel. However, Bettinelli-Olpin said that he and Gillett agreed that it couldn’t be “a cash grab sequel, but something that comes from a place of love and passion.”
Luckily, the answer was in their hands all along, on the last page of the original script for Ready or Not. Gillett explained that screenwriters Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy had included “this tag about a bigger world of Le Bail families, families that have sold their souls to Le Bail.”
The first film centered on the powerful and perverse Le Domas family, but it turns out they were members of a global cabal of the untouchably rich, played by a murderer’s row of genre actors including Kevin Durand (Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes), Néstor Carbonell (Bates Motel), and even Elijah Wood as the lawyer/dark priest who keeps them within the terms of their demonic contracts. “The whole cast, we keep pinching ourselves,” Bettinelli-Olpin said. That started with the head of the Danforth family, played by none other than horror directing legend David Cronenberg. Bettinelli-Olpin credited their casting directors for suggesting this wild swing on a Tuesday, “and on Wednesday he was in, and just as fans it was special to us.”
If the monstrous elite are running to get closer to the powers of Hell, Grace is trying to save her family from a fate worse than death – or just plain death. Enter Blockers and Freaky star Kathryn Newton as Grace’s estranged sister, Faith, who suddenly finds herself caught up in this Satanic battle for survival.
The filmmakers knew that they couldn’t just rerun the first film, instead needing to up the emotional stakes for Grace, and so they had always considered the sequel as a two-hander. Gillett said, “It was a police officer for a minute, it was a friend from childhood for a minute, [but] we needed it to be a relationship that required very little explaining, where there was almost a cheat code for what the past might be. So a sibling, it just made a lot of sense.”
Finding a sister was as easy as finding the logic for the sequel, as the duo had worked with Newton on their 2024 vampire comedy, Abigail. Gillett said, “It was just so clear to us how similar Sam and Kathryn’s energy is. … We had actually written something after Abigail specifically for them, and we just went, ‘Man, can we just port this over into Ready or Not?’”
Faith’s existence actually makes a liar out of Grace, since she says in the first film that she has no family, but for Gillett that’s actually a way to deepen her character. “Her past is coming back to haunt her in this movie,” he said, and the sibling relationship that she had buried allows her to grow. “You think about the first movie as a love story that devolves and falls apart over the movie, and in this one it’s the opposite. Two characters who couldn’t be further apart at the beginning learning to love each other again.”
So, basically, it’s a horror riff on Frozen.
Bettinelli-Olpin laughed. “We had to cut the part when they burst into song.” If there’s an evil mirror version of the sisters, it’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar, as the untrustworthy and mercilessly capable Ursula Danforth. Gillett said, “It’s just rare that you get to work with the collection of talents that Sarah has, and understands the stunt work, and is not afraid to go right to the edge of what it’s safe for a cast member to do. …. With someone like that, you just stand up and let ’em cook.”
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come
Headliner, World Premiere
Friday 13, 5:30pm, Paramount Theatre
Saturday 14, 11am, Paramount Theatre
This article appears in SXSW 2026 Festival Guide.