Following the success of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s brilliant horror/comedy Ready or Not, Searchlight Pictures asked them to shoot another script, whether it was ready or not.

Picking up in the immediate aftermath of Grace’s (Samara Weaving) deadly game of hide-and-seek against her new (now dead) family, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come has ostensibly the same setup, insofar as she has to play again against the remaining members of the Satanic cult she unwittingly married into, Meghan Markle style.

The difference this time is that the sharp characters, comedy and story of the 2019 thriller are nowhere to be found. Part of this is inevitable; so much of the original’s delight was in the surprise at the weird events unfolding in front of Grace and the viewer, and the suspenseful ambiguity of what will actually happen if the family should fail in their insane ritual. These were satisfyingly resolved at the end of the first film, putting the sequel on a hiding to nothing.

The smart move would have been to shake it up with a different game entirely, such as deadly Charades or deathly dull Monopoly. But Ready or Not 2 refuses to stray from a rigid set of rules, which are explained all the way through by Elijah Wood in a purely expository role. Despite the lack of plot, the sequel is longer and baggier than its predecessor, and fails to raise any satire or laughs from the played-out premise. Grace has no connection to the villains this time around, eliminating the emotional and comedic intrigue of battling her in-laws. There is no sense of place or atmosphere in the featureless casino setting, the violence is limp and lazy, and the dark wit has been replaced by people yelling “Fuck you” at each other.

There are also too many characters with no personality, wasting Sarah Michelle Gellar on a thanklessly bland part, while David Cronenberg literally delivers all his lines from a bed (he is 83 in fairness). The worst offender though is Kathryn Newton as Grace’s sister, who has no more chemistry with Weaving than she does with the camera. The script started life as a separate project about some sisters that Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett were developing, before reworking it as a Ready or Not movie. The result is a series of attack scenes interspersed with two sisters arguing, so you’re better off just watching the original with an irritable sibling.

Even though Ready or Not was essentially a parlour game, and this time Grace is fighting to save the world as well as her soul, the stakes are so much lower here because there is not a soul worth saving. Just pray to Lucifer that the franchise goes into hiding rather than seeking out Ready or Not 3: The Sardinic Verses.