Inside That Brutal Death Scene

[This story contains spoilers for Ready or Not 2:  Here I Come.]

In Radio Silence’s Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Ursula Danforth painfully realizes that her twin brother, Titus (Shawn Hatosy), is even more of a raging lunatic than she previously thought. His moral alignment matters when control of the world hinges on the outcome of the latest lethal game of hide-and-seek. The Danforths’ sprawling estate that includes a casino and golf course is hosting the last-minute event in response to Grace MacCaullay (Samara Weaving) eliminating a “High Council” family in the original 2019 film that Radio Silence’s Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett co-directed. Ursula ultimately decides that she cannot let Titus win their satanic congregation’s most prominent seat, one that their ailing father (David Cronenberg’s Chester Danforth) sacrificed so that his heir and heiress could give their family the best chance to preserve global power for many more years.

Thus, with Gellar being one of the most iconic scream queens to ever grace the big and small screen, an expectation begins to form that her character is going to sacrifice herself for the sake of two of the most notable scream queens of the last decade, Weaving and Kathryn Newton, and their sister characters of Grace and Faith. Late in the film, Grace exploits a loophole and agrees to marry Titus in order to protect herself and her sister from further bloodshed, rewarding Titus with the “High Seat” at the same time. Prior to their nuptials, the Danforth family’s in-house glam squad cleans Grace up, and that’s when Ursula approaches her to reconsider her plan to wed her psychotic sibling. However, he crashes the parley and brutally snaps Ursula’s neck in front of Grace, subverting the idea of a generational assist between scream queens.

“We really needed to turn the dial up on the doom and the sense of fucking hopelessness as you’re entering the third act,” Gillett tells The Hollywood Reporter. “And casting Sarah Michelle in that part heightens all of that. She is such a legend and an icon that you don’t expect that ending in any way,” Bettinelli-Olpin adds.

Shortly after becoming husband and wife, Grace milks another loophole in the hide-and-seek rulebook and slays Titus, thereby sending the rest of the High Council to slaughter at the hands of their demonic overlord, Le Bail. Grace, Faith and a spared sacrificial goat proceed to walk off into the sunrise, marking a new beginning for the previously estranged siblings. This conclusion raises the question of where the budding franchise could go now that Grace no longer has a target on her back thanks to the High Council being reduced to splatter. 

Co-screenwriters Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy have a pitch for a third Ready or Not movie, one that they have yet to share in detail with Radio Silence. But Gillett does point out that Le Bail’s demented game of hide-and-seek is bigger than just its two recent rounds with Grace.

“Le Bail is still around. The Lawyer [Elijah Wood] is still around. The fun of the first movie and the very definitive end of the second movie is that the mythology still exists,” Gillett says. “Le Bail isn’t a character who wins or loses. He’s just all about chaos. And that seed would allow us to grow any number of stories out of the mythology.”

The film also ends with a dangling thread involving Martina Rajan (Maša Lizdek). Her cowardly husband, Madhu (Varun Saranga), had nominated her to play hide-and-seek in his stead, so she opted to get out of Dodge before all of the participating families met their end at Grace and Titus’ wedding. However, because she agreed to play by signing on the dotted line, Mr. Le Bail took her life off screen as well. Radio Silence nearly included a mid-credit scene to explicitly confirm her ill fate.

“We talked about shooting an end tag where Grace and Faith are still walking on that long road out of the resort. Then they walk by Martina’s crashed car on the side of the road, and it would be filled with splatter and blood,” Gillett shares. “Of course, at the end of the game, her name is on the contract in that book, so she also explodes.”

Below, during the spoiler portion of THR’s recent wide-ranging chat with Radio Silence, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett also discuss Gellar’s reaction to her character’s death.

***

[Spoiler Warning.] Sarah Michelle Gellar’s character’s death was pretty shocking. As Ursula (Gellar) started to see her brother Titus (Shawn Hatosy) for who he really is, I kept thinking she was going to sacrifice herself as part of a generational assist from scream queen to scream queens (Samara Weaving, Kathryn Newton). But she goes out much more brutally, so what’s the story behind that move? 

MATT BETTINELLI-OLPIN It’s Guy Busick’s fault. 

It always is.

RADIO SILENCE (Laugh.)

TYLER GILLETT It was actually one of our ideas that was pitched. When it became a sister story, we also knew that the ensemble had another very important sibling pair in Titus and Ursula. We loved that the two of those relationships could be foils and mirrors of each other. As Grace and Faith are coming together, Titus and Ursula are moving in opposite directions, and we really loved the reverse symmetry of that. It was a really interesting thing to play with, and in a lot of ways, that structure helped us design the evolution or de-evolution of those characters. In prep, we were still doing rewrites and getting ready to shoot, and it just felt like we were missing another move. That sibling relationship, once we’d started to really calibrate them as a foil to Grace and Faith, we needed some form of a conclusion with the two of them that felt like it was going to accelerate us into the end of the movie. We really needed to turn the dial up on the doom and the sense of fucking hopelessness as you’re entering the third act. And what a better way than for this character who was under the thumb of his dad — and then oddly under the thumb of his sister — to finally free himself of all of it in the worst, most terrifying way. Titus is illustrating to Grace, “Nope, this is what you’re marrying into. You thought that you were going to survive, but I’ve basically taken your soul with this proposition.”

MATT BETTINELLI-OLPIN Totally. And casting Sarah Michelle in that part heightens all of that. She is such a legend and an icon that you don’t expect that ending in any way. 

TYLER GILLETT And she was so into it.

MATT BETTINELLI-OLPIN Yeah, she was into it.

TYLER GILLETT Sarah has obviously done her fair share of physical stunt work, so she fully committed to the almost romantic tragedy of that moment. The last thing she says to her brother is, “I love you, ” before he breaks her neck. It’s so fucked-up and Shakespearean and heartbreaking. So Sarah was just super, super down to go to that dark place.

Grace needed Titus to believe she is going through with the wedding, so I did wonder if she knowingly set Ursula up in that scene. That way, Titus would be a little less on guard when she ultimately turns on him during the wedding.

MATT BETTINELLI-OLPIN That’s an interesting take. We just really loved the idea that at that moment in the movie — and for about the next five to ten minutes — Grace does not have a plan. There is no out. She is truly hopeless for that entire moment and the next scene.

You’ve said that you want to keep making Ready or Not movies, but now that the High Council is blown to smithereens, where else can you really go with Grace and Faith?

MATT BETTINELLI-OLPIN A nice little rom-com on a beach somewhere.

TYLER GILLETT  Yeah, they go on a honeymoon.

Is there a Low Council?

RADIO SILENCE (Laugh.)

TYLER GILLETT Le Bail is still around. The Lawyer [Elijah Wood] is still around. The fun of the first movie and the very definitive end of the second movie is that the mythology still exists. To us, Le Bail isn’t a character who wins or loses. He’s just all about chaos. And that seed would allow us to grow any number of stories out of the mythology.

MATT BETTINELLI-OLPIN We didn’t think there was a story for a second one, so we were pleasantly surprised when the guys pitched us this bigger world. We were like, “Yes, that’s fun. There’s a way into that.”

Have you spitballed anything concrete with Guy and co-screenwriter R. Christopher Murphy? 

TYLER GILLETT Not directly.

MATT BETTINELLI-OLPIN We’ve been told that they have an opening scene.

TYLER GILLETT Yeah, they’ve told us they have a pitch. They have a shape for what a third move could be, but we haven’t discussed it. We haven’t been let into that conversation yet.

It would’ve been rough if one died after they finally reconcile, but Grace and Faith were always safe, right? 

MATT BETTINELLI-OLPIN Yeah, we really did approach this movie in so many ways as a love story between the two sisters. We wanted to give them a happy ending, but we also wanted to put them through hell getting there.

Madhu’s wife, Martina (Maša Lizdek), Le Bail’d out of the estate before the third act. Did she explode wherever she ended up?

TYLER GILLETT She survived until dawn and then paff. [Writer’s Note: “Paffing” is the term the Ready or Not team uses when characters explode.] We just loved the idea that you don’t have to hunt. You can choose to not hunt, but what you’re sacrificing is the ability to win the seat. For a minute, we talked about shooting an end tag where Grace and Faith are still walking on that long road out of the resort. Then they walk by Martina’s crashed car on the side of the road, and it would be filled with splatter and blood. Of course, at the end of the game, her name is on the contract in that book, so she also explodes.

***
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come is now playing in movie theaters.