Interview: READY OR NOT 2: HERE I COME Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett Want to Make Big-Hearted, Blood-Splattered Pictures

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come isn’t a rinse and repeat sequel. Radio Silence filmmakers Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin give Grace (Samara Weaving) a fight with not only personal but global stakes. It’s a bigger story, but as Daily Dead’s Matt Donato noted in his review, there’s also “a cracking motive and even seedier backstory to throw Grace” into this time around. 

Screenwriters Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy add plenty of fresh ingredients to Radio Silence’s sequel. Their confidence as horror filmmakers remains apparent in every scene. From their work on Abigail, Ready or Not, and the Scream franchise, Gillett and Bettinelli-Olpin continually define their blood splatter with character and heart. 

What was David Cronenberg's reaction to the film’s mammoth portrait of him? 

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin: He actually wasn't ever on that set, but I can tell you how we felt seeing it for the first time. I think that the size of that painting is a pretty good representation of the size of him as a legend. Everybody that walked by it was mesmerized. We've actually had it shipped from Toronto back to our office in LA where it now resides in the lobby. 

What's the size of that thing?

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin: The crate and the painting were 400 pounds to ship, so it's significant. 

It’s a sweet gesture in the movie, but also, you two happen to make very sweet, kind-hearted horror movies. How important is that to you guys? 

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin: It's everything.

Tyler Gillett: It's pretty important. 

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin: I don't think that we would ever tell a story or would be able to find our way into a story that didn't have that. For us, that's got to be where all of the other stuff grows from. The origin of every great story for us is how it feels. What are those sweet emotional moments that are maybe unexpected in the genre? We prioritize that above everything else. 

Tyler Gillett: This movie specifically—it's a rocket. And then, there's also these intensely emotional scenes. I think that's the sweet spot for us. 

You guys have said when making a sequel, you still want it to feel new. How do you accomplish that? 

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin: It's making sure that you're not just retreading what you've loved about the past. We're more interested in giving people a similar feeling instead of a similar experience. I think we have a strong intuition about when something deserves to be nodded to and when something is nostalgia for nostalgia's sake. 

The fun of a sequel is that there's an awareness of the audience’s experience. And so, there's an entirely new creative process in figuring out how to subvert and surprise people, given their preexisting knowledge. It's a fun thing we've gotten to do a few times now and have always enjoyed. 

Whether it's for the audience or for yourselves, what did you find successful about Ready or Not that you wanted to stay true to in the sequel? 

Tyler Gillett: A large portion of that would be Samara and how she embodies the Grace character. What was so exciting to us about this part of the story was there's more depth to Grace. Sam brings so much to the first one, her vulnerability and intensity comes through. And then in this one, we were able to go into her backstory a little bit more and flesh that out. 

Going back to what we were just talking about, there's the scene in the first one with Mark O'Brien and Andie McDowell where they have the mother-son talk right towards the end of the second act. It was a scene that was written late in the process of making the first movie, and it became collectively one of our favorite scenes. And so, it unlocked something in us where we were like, Oh shit, there's room for this. You can have a conversation as intense as a chase if you do it right. It’s these fun shifts. 

You two are very good with ensembles. How do you approach getting the best out of your on-camera team?

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin: It's one of the most exciting and stressful parts of the process for us, because we know the tone and the feel of the movie lives or dies by how well that ensemble works together. We were going to be casting an even larger net for this one, so there was more opportunity to explore different points of view on the absurd situation of this movie. 

The goal is give them all a real moment to be a character. Make sure that they all are playing a different note, that there's not a sense of sameness. For us, that can be the danger of a big ensemble—if people feel unnecessary because they share similar points of view or traits. 

You two really let [Canada’s own] Kevin Durand flex his character actor muscles here and in Abigail. How much do you want to let that guy go loose? 

Tyler Gillett: A lot. In the two movies we had made with him, he had a lot of input to the way he played those characters. The script is great, and then Kevin takes that and turns it into this. In this one, I mean, he's a coked-up porn magnate. Kevin only shot for what, three days? He came in turned up to 11. 

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin: We always encourage. We want people to give us too much, because it's much more fun to scale back a crazy take or a swing than to try to push somebody into that braveness. Everybody, Kevin included, showed up with the bravest choice. Kevin had some false teeth made for a role that he had done previously. He was like, “I think I got to bring the teeth. I think I got to wear the teeth.” He put them on during one of the first takes we did with him. They were crazy. 

Tyler Gillett: It was a great swing. 

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin: Doing a rail of coke in your porn magnate office is far enough. I don't know about the teeth, but it was awesome. So much of that look, the craziness and the bigness of that helped shape the energy we wanted out of that character, ultimately. 

How dense is the book of laws? Are there pages we don’t see filled with rules? 

Tyler Gillett: The book is real. There were a lot of discussions about it. Do you remember how many pages it is? I want to say a thousand.

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin: It's more than that. It's probably between 10 and 15 pounds. 

Tyler Gillett: And there's so much stuff in it. We didn't get to read all of it, of course. Every single time you'd open it and read something, you could tell how much thought was put into it. It was bizarre. I don't know if you can see any of it in the finished movie, but it'd be a fun thing to– 

Tyler Gillett: To pause and read some of it. 

Were there any elements or rules discussed on the first Ready or Not that you didn’t show but already knew were a part of the world that we see in the sequel? 

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin: Not really. There was always the notion [of] the council, a group of Le Bail acolytes outside of the very contained world of the first movie. The Van Horn family is name-checked in the first movie. You get a little bit of a sense of, Oh, this happens with other rich families. 

Tyler Gillett: In the opening shot of the first movie there's all the board games, and one of them is Secret Council. It's literally right there when you watch the first movie. There was a scene in the first movie that we couldn't shoot, because we had no money, for the councils at a conference at some fancy hotel. 

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin: Yeah, all talking shit about, "Oh, the Le Domas family has failed." So, there was always that little seed planted early for us. In terms of rules, one of the big questions of the first movie: "Is the devil and the pact real?" And of course, answering that question definitively and then starting the next movie with, "Yeah, he is real, so then what? What's the world now that we have that vital piece of information?" It allowed us to design a lore that feels ancient and important, but it's also fucking wacky, absurd, and over the top at the same time. 

Grace desperately needing a cigarette is a really fun character trait, but for the first movie, was that something you had to fight for? 

Tyler Gillett: We love characters that, and I don't mean this in a negative way, who have flaws and darkness. The smoking—it's not just like, Smoking is cool, or Don't smoke, smoking's bad, it kills you, but she's dealing with shit. That's her method. In the first movie, it was a fight. In this movie, it was not a fight. 

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin: That was a fight. 

Tyler Gillett: There's even a moment in Scream VI where Melissa [Barrera] smokes, and we thought we weren't going to be able to do it. They let us do it. It was Melissa's idea, and we said, "That's realistic. Let's do that."

Lastly, what is it like working with sound mixers on preserving Samara Weaving’s scream? What effect do you want it to have in a theater? 

Tyler Gillett: Her scream is unfiltered. That is just Sam. I mean, holy shit, it's always great. It always gives chills when she does it. 

Matt Bettinelli-Olpin: We make sure that she's always boomed, that there's multiple sources of audio for those screams. 

Tyler Gillett: We're huge fans of that scream and conscious of getting it as good as possible.