Ready Or Not features one of the best endings of any modern horror movie, and a great deal of credit for its effectiveness belongs to star Samara Weaving. The action in the film's final sequence is amazing all by itself – with the family of antagonists exploding like bloody balloons – but what makes scene special is that it's soundtracked by Samara Weaving's riotous laughter, with her character blissed out to see the villains face such crazy consequences. It's an amazing choice for the scene, and genre fans have the actress to thank.
I first learned about how Ready Or Not's wild ending came together back in 2019 when I spoke with directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, but I sought Weaving's story about the experience when I spoke to her last month during the Los Angeles press day for the new sequel, Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come. I asked about both her idea to laugh at the end of the first movie and how that authority impacted the making of the 2026 follow-up, and she explained how it was that "the laugh" came to be. Speaking about the ending, Weaving said,
I think because tonally it walks such a fine line that I wanted to make sure in the edit they had whatever version they needed of that specific scene. So there was a version of that final scene where I'm taking it very seriously and like truly shocked and horrified and yeah, I thought, 'Oh, let me do one more where I just laugh to see if...' Because that's what the audience might react to. Like it's a funny thing. And so if I'm laughing, the audience knows like, 'Oh, we're allowed to laugh.' It's and it's kind of a weird thing, human response.
That's really the special sauce of Ready Or Not. The movie has an intense premise with deadly stakes, and it has plenty of shocking gore and violence… but it's all super fun. Calling it a horror comedy would perhaps be a step too far, but there are some big laughs and it was clearly made with a lot of joy and love for the scariest of genres. There are points where the energy by itself makes you laugh, but when it comes to the ending, the laughter of Weaving's Grace is most certainly infectious.
Article continues belowAs for how it impacted the making of Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come, the actress told me that it was definitely a continuation of the established collaboration. She had the experience of playing Grace to support her, but she also felt a lot of freedom to try different things and make sure that the directors and everyone in post-production had exactly what they needed. She continued,
So I tried to do the same thing in the second one. Just give them options so that depending on what scene follows it or what's coming afterwards, do we need this scene to have a little bit more levity or do we need to bring it down? They're great like that.
Arriving in theaters this weekend, the sequel keeps the fun going with Samara Weaving's Grace finding herself falling deeper into the rabbit hole of sinister dealings after disposing of all her in-laws. Ready Or Not 2 is set directly in the aftermath of its predecessor and finds Grace once again hunted as part of a game of hide and seek – though this time around, she is paired with her estranged sister Faith (Kathryn Newton). Also starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shawn Hatosy, Elijah Wood, Néstor Carbonell, Kevin Durand and the legendary David Cronenberg, the new movie arrives in theaters everywhere this weekend.
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