Matt Bettinelli-Olpin
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Connections, in both directions
John Wick (2014)
Directed by Chad Stahelski
influenced Ready or Not: Here I Come (2026)
Visuals Themes Plot
Imagine a film with action scenes as intense as a John Wick movie, but where many of the combatants don't know how to fight or use the weapons they wield.
The story is beyond ridiculous, and attempts to expand the “Ready or Not”-iverse reminds us of the superior “John Wick” saga. Those films have star power (Keanu Reeves), expert fight choreography and a stellar sense of mayhem.
…there’s only so far you can take a John Wick-like world-building of your central concept before it mainly is a retread in most respects…
The film takes a leaf from Lionsgate’s popular John Wick franchise in expanding a self-contained film through the use of global secret societies and the like.
Yeah, it borrows more than a little from the John Wick school of sequelization (and executes it not nearly as cleanly).
The Attorney reads from the comically-large rule book like a Bible, but the foregrounding of arcane rules, twisty politics, and agreements bound in blood by this organization – this High Council – all feel painfully duplicative of John Wick’s High Table, especially as the first film kept these elements mostly relegated to tossed-off asides from the Le Domas family.
Abigail is allegedly a loose reworking of the 1936 Universal Studios film Dracula’s Daughter, but it’s difficult to see how, beyond a musical nod to the original 1931 Dracula and the fact that Abigail is, well, a vampiric daughter.
It's a heavy hint that the theme music, accompanied by a solo ballet turn, is that snatch of Swan Lake heard at the beginning of Dracula in 1931, but the first act then plays like a shadowy riff on Reservoir Dogs.
What the trailers don’t reveal is the twist ending, that Abigail is not just any vampire-ballerina, but Dracula’s daughter. Here, Dracula is played by British actor Matthew Goode, and while the other characters refer to him by his underworld alias, “Lazar,” the film’s credits identify him simply as “Father.” The implication, however, is clear.
Scream 7 (2026)
Directed by Kevin Williamson
influenced by Scream VI (2023)
and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin by name
Visuals Themes
On Bettinelli-Olpin, rather than any one film
…nor the playfulness of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, the filmmaking duo behind the previous two franchise-reviving instalments…
…filmmakers Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett poured over the last outing, when Ghostface did the most with dark New York alleyways, apartment complexes and overcrowded subways…
On the films
The motivation in Scream VI (2023) was on the daffy side, yet still vastly superior to this.
…a sequel so determined to bring the franchise full circle that it seems to harbor animosity for its direct predecessor, Scream VI…
This pushed the film series farther away from Woodsboro — to college (Scream 2), to Los Angeles (Scream 3), to New York (Scream VI), getting to a point where Final Girl Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) was no longer the hero, but either a supporting character (Scream 4 and 5 — which was confusingly titled Scream) or absent altogether (Scream VI).
That alone separates this film from Scream (2022) and Scream VI.
Scream VI that, despite some flaws, still managed to keep its momentum in a refreshing urban setting…
…like the theater in the climax of Scream VI (2023), which was filled with items from the Woodsboro killings…
Ready or Not (2019)
Directed by Tyler Gillett
influenced Ready or Not: Here I Come (2026), Abigail (2024), Scream VI (2023), Southbound (2015)
Themes Plot
Few horror-comedies in recent memory have landed with the same ferocious confidence as 2019’s Ready or Not.
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come expands the deadly game beyond the mansion and into a sprawling resort, giving Grace a new fight for survival as rival families enter the chaos.
The first Ready or Not is a fun, piercing, albeit overly on-the-nose takedown of the rich.
And in 2019, they lined up to catch “Ready or Not,” which follows young bride Grace MacCaullay (sensational scream queen Samara Weaving) who is hunted by her groom’s wealthy Le Domas crime family as part of a wedding night ritual to worship the devil or die trying to avoid it in a game of Hide and Seek.
“Ready or Not 2” plays like an extension of the first film, picking up exactly where part one left off.
READY OR NOT 2: HERE I COME is the long-awaited sequel to the 2019 hit genre-mix.
While some of the kills are inventive, this kind of creativity has been done before- and often better- in franchises like Final Destination or other horror films that fully commit to their set pieces.
We’re not asking for Looney Tunes-esque wackiness here, but some kind of clever setup and payoff with these unique environments (à la Final Destination) would give the movie some much-needed levity and energy.
…we’ve gotten our current scary series, SCREAM, along with the FINAL DESTINATION.
…playing a character that feels like a cocktail of Buffy Summers and toxic socialite Kathryn Merteuil from Cruel Intentions (1999).
Among the hunting family members, you can look forward to Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar (Scream 2, I Know What You Did Last Summer). And yes, she will use a stake-like weapon at some point, so look out for that little treat.
It is a pleasure to watch Gellar chew on a more venomous role while still engaging in some Buffy-isms during her throwdowns with Grace.
Taking on the MacCaullay sisters at the Danforth complex in Ready or Not 2 are twin siblings Ursula (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Titus Danforth (Shawn Hatosy)…
Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy!) shows up as his depraved daughter Ursula…
Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Sarah Michelle Gellar…
Since the immediate failure of their Dark Universe – which would have seen a shared cinematic universe with the likes of Tom Cruise’s Mummy, Johnny Depp’s Invisible Man, and Angelina Jolie as the Bride of Javier Bardem’s Frankenstein(‘s Monster) – Universal has wisely reverted to simply letting filmmakers create their own standalone takes on the studio’s gallery of classic monsters. More often than not, the results have been fairly solid, with Leigh Whannell’s 2020 version of The Invisible Man being a prime example of what a filmmaker’s vision can bring to a familiar concept (the writer-director is now currently working on a modern-day revamp of The Wolf Man).
Abigail expertly honors what came before while simultaneously flipping vampire subgenre tropes and audience expectations on their heads. In doing so, Abigail effectively cements itself as the most inventive Universal Monsters movie since 2020's The Invisible Man.
The extended cast of potential killers/High Chair fillers are a rogues gallery of wealth stereotypes that would feel at home in a Knives Out flick (even if they’re not nearly as fleshed out as Rian Johnson’s ensembles tend to be).
…the first movie came out a handful of months before Parasite and Knives Out…
I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025)
Directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson
influenced by Scream VI (2023)
Themes
…verges on a meta-level more comparable to Scream, or rather, 2022’s Scream and its sequel, Scream VI…
Which slasher reboot or legacyquel is the best?
Scream VI (2023)…
…the latest in a line of clever and wildly entertaining blood fests lot like Ready or Not (2019) and Abigail (2024)…
Recently I reviewed the 2024 thriller Abigail, noting that its core premise was one best left unknown when viewing the film for the first time. Here we are again with Companion, a 2025 thriller that essentially plays an identical trick.
Similar to what the creators of Abigail dealt with, writer/director Drew Hancock knew he couldn’t keep the first reveal hidden, using it instead as a springboard into sneaky surprises and clever twists.
If Laurie from Halloween can be slowly chased by Michael Myers for decades, Grace should get her well-fought sequel.
At the end of that decade, extremely long-running franchises sprang from HALLOWEEN and FRIDAY THE 13TH.
Leaping from vulnerable to vicious with alarming ease, Weir delivers a performance that ranks with the likes of Linda Blair in The Exorcist, Isabelle Fuhrman in Orphan, and Patty McCormack in The Bad Seed.
It’s “Bridesmaids” meets “The Purge” with all stops in between.
His segment “The Accident” in 2015’s horror-science fiction anthology Southbound recalled the best, most twisted Twilight Zone episodes.
His well-received V/H/S is a cult classic and his 2016 horror Southbound dealing with similar themes.
Following his previous genre efforts Southbound and V/H/S, David Bruckner’s witty horror The Ritual treads a fine line between scares and laughs, but this examination of late-thirties masculinity in crisis by way of forest-bound terror is right on target.
Making his feature debut after directing segments for the horror anthology films V/H/S and Southbound , David Bruckner proves that he is clearly familiar with the mechanics of his genre, but The Ritual misses the mark: working in a longer format, he comes up with a confused and unsustainable tangle of typical horror tropes.
Few modern directors are better suited for the job than David Bruckner, the man behind the infamous surgery segment in Southbound.
In 2007’s The Signal, about a strange transmission that drives humanity mad, Bruckner generated intense anxiety during an opening salvo involving a woman fleeing a corpse-filled apartment building; in 2012’s V/H/S, his “Amateur Night” provided a chilling up-close-and-personal warning about the hazards of cruising for sex; and in 2015’s Southbound, his “The Accident” cast a caustic eye on one man’s best efforts to care for a woman he unintentionally hit with his car.
…the first movie came out a handful of months before Parasite and Knives Out…
Satanic Panic (2019)
Directed by Chelsea Stardust
influenced Ready or Not: Here I Come (2026)
Themes
Unfolding where The Most Dangerous Game (1932) meets Satanic Panic (2019)…
The spontaneous balloon pop combustion novelty gets old as fast as the gore featured on The Boys, but it spins some great gags out of them.
Unlike the evasiveness of the consistency of the whole sum of V/H/S (2012-14), Southbound (2015), Holidays (2016) and XX (2017), Wild Tales (2014) and now The Ballad of Buster Scruggs have mastered that which seemingly eludes so many filmmakers.
The Most Dangerous Game (1932)
Directed by Irving Pichel
influenced Ready or Not: Here I Come (2026)
Plot
Unfolding where The Most Dangerous Game (1932) meets Satanic Panic (2019)…
House on Haunted Hill (1959)
Directed by William Castle
influenced Ready or Not: Here I Come (2026)
Characters
This new phase of the game is presided over by Elijah Wood’s unnamed Attorney, who’s purely a functionary here but one imbued with a nice, light touch of mischief in the vein of House on Haunted Hill’s Vincent Price or Clue’s Tim Curry performances.