Ready or Not 2: Here I Come hit theaters last week, and while we didn’t think it surpassed the 2019 original, it’s still an energetic and gruesome survival tale. One high point of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s film: the new supporting characters that join Grace (Samara Weaving) as she once again becomes a target for weapons-wielding one-percenters, with Kathryn Newton, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shawn Hatosy, Elijah Wood, David Cronenberg, and more in the sequel’s cast.
Of course, this being a Ready or Not movie—set in a world of Satanic worshippers held to some very non-negotiable rules—not everyone makes it out alive. Most don’t, in fact. In a new interview, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett talked about one big character sacrifice they had to make.
In Ready or Not 2, Gellar and Hatosy play Ursula and Titus Danforth, twins fighting to keep their family atop the sinister pyramid of elites who rule the world. Their coveted seat is at risk because Grace survived the events of the first film—rude!—and the only way they can keep themselves in the running is by eliminating their father (Cronenberg), who’s terminally ill. He’s also so power-mad and family-loyal that he encourages them to do it, but it still stings.
All that is to say the Danforth siblings have a lot on the line, and it’s not entirely surprising that they break ranks and turn on each other as the movie progresses. What is surprising is the culminating scene in which Titus cruelly strangles his own sister.
Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett couldn’t have known that Gellar’s horrible on-screen demise would line up with the demise of her Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot, but it felt like double the pain for her fans. Still, it was a necessary component to the story.
“As Grace and Faith [Kathryn Newton’s character, Grace’s estranged sister] are coming together, Titus and Ursula are moving in opposite directions, and we really loved the reverse symmetry of that,” Gillette explained to the Hollywood Reporter.
“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.”
Added Bettinelli-Olpin, “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.”
The directors agreed that Gellar was “into it” and embraced what was needed to perform Ursula’s agonizing death scene.
“Sarah has obviously done her fair share of physical stunt work, so she fully committed to the almost romantic tragedy of that moment,” Gillette said. “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.”
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