It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.

You believe that someone out of the past can enter and take possession of a living being?

We may be true with the past, but the past is not through with us.

Welcome back to The Next Picture Show, a movie of the week podcast devoted to a classic film in the way it's shaped our thoughts on a recent release. I'm Tasha Robinson, here again with Scott Tobias. Keith Phipps. Our producer, Genevieve Kosky, couldn't be here this week. She went into the conservatory alone with that shadowy figure with a rope in one hand and a pipe in the other, but we figure she's probably fine. We're fairly sure we'll see her next time. Last episode, we talked about Clue, the writing and directing debut of My Cousin Vinnie director Jonathan Lynn, and a big-time theatrical flop that turned into a cult hit. It's too early to decide yet whether Matt, Bett Nellie Ulpin, and Tyler Gillett's horror comedy Ready or, will eventually become a cult hit in the same way. But it certainly deserves to. It's a much darker, messier movie, with more gruesome deaths and a lot more horror movie reveling in grotesque agony. But it's also surprising and silly in the same over-the-top way as clue, with a whole lot of bloody mayhem that just gets more intense and surprising as the film goes on. The lead-in makes it seem like a fairly standard variation on the most dangerous game, with a new bride informed that family tradition says she has to play a game on her wedding night. The luck of the draw when she pulls her game selection from the family game box says she has to play hide-and-seek, which everyone in the family recognizes as a cue to take up antique weapons, hunt her through the house, and try to murder her to keep a supposed family curse from claiming them. Like other recent captive women movies like 10 Cloverfield Drive, Ready or Not relies heavily on its protagonists, resourcefulness, and indomitability. And as the body count rises, it looks like it's going to be another cast-attrition

horror thriller, the kind that inevitably ends with a last face-off with an Uber killer and a final

girl. But Ready or Not dodges a lot of the expected structure and makes many of its would-be killers

pretty ridiculous while still building up the tension and suffering. It's an oddball movie, but one that

finds wacky, fun, new directions for familiar

genre. Not all of its big twists land, but while Clue boasts three different endings,

and Reddy or Not Only Has One, filmmakers aren't going to forget that one ending anytime soon.

So, at midnight, you have to play a game.

Why?

It's just something we do when someone new joins the family.

A game.

What game?

Hide and seek? Are we really going to play that?

Well, the rules are simple.

You can hide anywhere.

We then try to find you.

So there's no way for me to win, right?

I mean, stay hidden until dawn.

No, thank you.

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