Ready or Not

Grace, a tough but hopeful woman who grew up in foster care, thinks she has finally found a real family when she marries Alex Le Domas, the estranged son of a wealthy board-game dynasty. Their wedding takes place at the vast Le Domas estate, where Alex's relatives are alternately charming, condescending, and strangely tense — as if they're all waiting for something that hasn't been explained to her yet. After the reception winds down, Alex confesses that there is one family tradition she must complete to be fully accepted: at midnight, every new spouse draws a card from a mysterious heirloom box and plays whatever game is named. In a candlelit room filled with portraits of stern ancestors, Grace pulls her card and reads it aloud: Hide and Seek. The atmosphere shifts. The family forces smiles and insists they must play by the rules, while Alex looks horrified. Thinking it's just eccentric rich-family hazing, Grace hides in the mansion as the others arm themselves with antique weapons and spread through the labyrinth of corridors, servants' passages, and secret doors. Very quickly, the truth snaps into focus: this is not a playful initiation but a ritualized human hunt. The Le Domas clan believes their fortune comes from a pact with a mysterious benefactor, and that if they fail to sacrifice the new bride before dawn, a curse will annihilate them. Barefoot, still in her wedding dress, Grace dodges crossbow bolts, pits, and security systems that aren't on her side. She witnesses servants accidentally killed by panicked relatives and learns she is not the first game the family has played. Alex, wracked by guilt, initially tries to help her escape, but his loyalty to Grace puts him in direct conflict with his father, his domineering aunt, and the rest of the bloodthirsty household. As Grace's injuries and exhaustion mount, her appearance shifts from glowing bride to blood-streaked survivor, stripping away any fantasy of a normal life with this family. The Le Domas siblings and in-laws — high on adrenaline and terror of the supposed curse — cycle between incompetence and viciousness, giving the hunt a streak of mean-spirited black comedy even as the stakes remain deadly serious. Grace tries multiple escape routes: calling for help, stealing a car, reaching the outer grounds — only to be dragged back into the nightmare each time. Alex becomes more and more consumed by the family's warped logic, suggesting that even someone who tried to break away is still shaped by the cult-like environment he was raised in. Eventually Grace is captured and strapped to a table for a ceremonial sacrifice as dawn approaches. The family chants, raises their weapons, and prepares to spill her blood before the heirloom box and the watchful portraits of their ancestors. At the last moment she fights back, throwing the ritual into chaos and forcing the ceremony to miss its precise timing. For a breathless moment there is doubt — maybe the curse isn't real and all the killing was for nothing. Then, as the sun fully rises, the pact's consequence proves horribly genuine: one by one, the Le Domas family members explode in grotesque, over-the-top fashion, confirming that their bargain was real and that failing to complete the ritual has doomed them. In the film's final moments, the mansion burns behind Grace as emergency responders arrive, baffled by the carnage. Exhausted, traumatized, and suddenly widowed, she sits on the front steps and lights a cigarette with shaking hands. When someone asks what happened, she delivers a bitter, darkly funny line about in-laws. Grace is left as the sole survivor of the Le Domas legacy — having escaped a marriage that was, from the first moment, a death sentence disguised as a fairy tale.