“Ready or Not,” the 2019 horror-comedy hit that turned “The Most Dangerous Game” into an aristocratic Victorian funhouse slasher movie, was nothing more (or less) than a well-executed piece of ultraviolent schlock. Yet there’s a funny way in which that movie has more resonance now than it did then. Its depiction of a clan of homicidal sickos, who in accordance with the family “rules” end up trying to murder their son’s new bride by dawn (she’s played by Samara Weaving, who comes on like a final-girl-gone-psycho version of Margot Robbie), anticipated our current fixation on the hidden horrors of the Epstein class.

Given all that, you’d expect the follow-up to be even timelier. And “Ready or Not 2: Here I Come,” a go-more-splattery-or-go-home sequel, is a film that very much taps into our vision of “the elites” as a global cabal of evil. It’s also more gruesomely over-the-top than “Ready or Not” (if that’s even possible), not to mention more operatic, more debased, more macabre, and more of a luridly preposterous cartoon. But all of that made it an ideal film to showcase to a crowd of screaming hellcats at SXSW, where the movie premiered tonight.

Is “Ready or Not 2” the bloody megaplex bash as knowing midnight movie? Does it combine honest laughs with a general invitation to crack up at its overboiled misanthropic cheesiness? Does it make up rules as it goes along? Yes and yes and yes, though we increasingly live in a movie world where all those things are attributes. “Ready or Not 2” delivers exactly what it promises: a garishly booby-trapped, winkingly clever-dumb good time. If that’s your idea of a good time.

The film opens by replaying the final scene of “Ready or Not”: Samara Weaving’s Grace, drenched in blood and pierced with wounds, having dispatched the most threatening members of the La Domas family (the rest of them exploded into bloody smithereens — cursed by her having survived The Game), sits on the steps outside the mansion that’s going up in flames behind her. She lights a cigarette and takes a weary victory puff, at which point a rescue worker asks, “What happened to you?” She replies, “In-laws.” She is then taken to a Connecticut hospital, where she wakes up handcuffed to the bed, with a cop informing her that she is wanted for murder and arson.

But that’s just a red herring. At the clinic, Grace is reunited with her younger sister, Faith (Kathryn Newton), who’s been estranged from her for seven years. Attacked by a coked-up goon who’s a harbinger of threats to come, Grace changes from her hospital duds back into her signature bloody wedding dress and dirty yellow sneakers, and that’s when she and Faith find themselves, bound and ball-gagged, sitting before the Council, a star chamber that consists of the representatives of six families, one of whom were the La Domases.

There’s another game afoot — or, at least, another Inviolable Rule dictated by the late Mr. Le Bail, who founded the La Domas fortune. (But why would his rules apply to other families? Oh, never mind.) A second dusk-till-dawn challenge looms: With the Le Domases gone, one member of each of the Council’s remaining clans must try to kill Grace. Whoever does will occupy the high seat and become the most powerful person on Earth. (If they fail, Grace will occupy the high seat.)

We meet the ailing old man who currently occupies that post — Chester Danforth, played by the legendary film director David Cronenberg, who makes his quizzical dourness felt for one scene. Chester has two adult twins, Ursula (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Titus (Shawn Hatosy), who are theoretically aligned but will duke it out for power. The other families are represented by characters who are like suspects in a third-rate “Knives Out” movie. But once again: Are we laughing with or at what low-kitsch nitwits they are? Maybe there’s no longer any difference.

“Ready or Not,” set inside the La Domas mansion, had a compact trap-door video-game ingenuity. The action of “Ready or Not 2” sprawls all over the grounds that make up the Council compound, and for a while the film is a ham-handed and rather scattershot slaughter fest. Viraj (Nadeem Umar-Khitab), a stoned club hound, proves to be a bumbler with a shotgun; other would-be assassins strike out in comparable ways. This gives Grace and Faith, between attempted killings, a chance to air their differences and engage in some sisterly therapy. But their relationship, as dramatized by Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy’s screenplay, is overdone and unconvincing. Faith despises Grace…for having “abandoned” her by going off to college. For years, both have been living in New York City…without any awareness of the fact. Are we supposed to believe any of this? It’s just a mechanism. The film’s co-directors, Matt Bettillini-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, who made the first film (which won them the right to direct the rebooted “Scream” and “Scream VI”), are kinesthetic gamesmen who are also one-dimensional psychologists.             

Yet they know how to bang the thriller puzzle pieces together, and to stage a scene of personal combat so that you feel the existential viciousness. At one point, they get two ultraviolent duels going at once: Grace facing off against Francesca (Maia Jae), who was originally engaged to Alex La Domas (it’s a cat fight on steroids), while the depraved rich boy Titus, in another locale, shows his murderous colors, the whole double fight set to “Total Eclipse of the Heart” (are you laughing yet?). Titus and Ursula make tasty villains, with Sarah Michelle Gellar turning up the icy hauteur, and Shawn Hatosy amusingly evoking the entitled blankness of George W. Bush. Standing above it all is Elijah Wood as the Council lawyer, who seems to be silently smirking at everything that happens, which is not an inappropriate response.  

It all climaxes with another wedding, this one unfolding in the church of Satan. It’s a scene that suggests “Eyes Wide Shut” as remade by Jerry Bruckheimer, and in that sense you could say that it taps into current obsessions. Will “Ready or Not 2” satisfy the audience that made “Ready or Not” a hit? No doubt. The way Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett work, the film has enough pulp craft to walk the line between violence and camp. Weaving, even more than before, makes Grace an ingénue gone banshee. But if there’s ever a “Ready or Not 3,” it would be good to see the elites in it do something that’s as interesting as it is brutal.  

Story: After serving a prison sentence, Kenna returns to her hometown hoping to rebuild her life and meet the daughter she has never known. As the child’s grandparents refuse to forgive her, Kenna finds an unexpected ally in Ledger.Review: ‘Reminders of Him’ carries the weight of expectation that often follows adaptations of novels by Colleen Hoover. Hoover’s books have an enormous following, and any screen version inevitably carries the hopes of readers who already have an emotional relationship with the story. The film stays close to the spirit of the novel, focusing on grief, regret, and the possibility of rebuilding a life after a life-altering mistake. Caswill presents a drama that moves through heavy emotions without turning the film into a spectacle of suffering. The story is intimate and restrained, though it sometimes struggles to escape the familiar patterns of contemporary romantic dramas. Still, the film finds enough sincerity in its central idea to remain engaging.The film revolves around Kenna (Maika Monroe), a young woman who returns to her hometown after serving a seven-year prison sentence connected to a tragic accident that killed her boyfriend, Scotty (Rudy Pankow). During the years she spent in prison, Kenna gave birth to a daughter, Diem, whom she has never been able to meet. Diem (Zoe Kosovic) is now being raised by Scotty’s parents, Grace (Lauren Graham) and Patrick Landry (Bradley Whitford). The Landrys want nothing to do with Kenna and are determined to keep her away from the girl. Kenna’s only unexpected ally turns out to be Ledger (Tyriq Withers), Scotty’s close friend. As their relationship grows more complicated, Kenna tries to prove that she deserves a place in her daughter’s life, even as the town continues to view her only through the memory of the accident.Caswill approaches the material with a steady and gentle style. The film avoids heightened drama and instead spends most of its time observing how guilt and resentment shape everyday interactions. Conversations shown in the film carry much of the emotional weight, and the story often unfolds in small moments. It’s a film that does not believe in confrontation, and it is largely absent in the film. This approach works well in the early stretches, where the tension between characters feels believable. However, the screenplay sometimes resorts to convenient developments that make the journey feel smoother than it probably should be. Some conflicts resolve too neatly, yet the film’s focus on forgiveness gives the story its moral compass.Monroe carries the story with a restrained portrayal of Kenna, avoiding exaggerated displays of grief. She plays the character as someone who has spent years learning how to live quietly with the consequences of her actions. Her expressions often reveal more than the dialogue, and that understatement works well for a character who feels she has already said too much in life. Withers brings warmth to Ledger, presenting him as a man caught between loyalty to the Landry family and a growing understanding of Kenna’s pain. Graham and Whitford give the Landrys emotional credibility; their resistance toward Kenna comes across as something rooted in genuine heartbreak.‘Reminders of Him’ reveals both its strengths and its limits. The story’s central idea, that people can attempt to rebuild their lives even after causing deep harm, is handled with care, but the path toward that message sometimes feels familiar. Caswill’s direction keeps the film sincere, and the performances prevent it from slipping into emotional excess. This is a soothing film that is earnest and watchable, carried by thoughtful acting and a clear emotional purpose. It suggests that forgiveness often arrives slowly and that rebuilding trust can be a far longer journey than losing it. This film does not turn the wheel in its genre, but the gentle pace and tone have a certain appeal.

In Naples, Italy, the past isn’t relegated to what’s behind us. In its crumbled, ancient majesty, the past is quite visible. And when it comes to the legacy of Mount Vesuvius — able to change the sky and move the earth — history encompasses all that’s above and plenty that’s subterranean, too.

The notion of Naples as a place in perpetual contact with its ghostly, grand history, whether you’re a citizen living on top of it or a visitor passing through, is what gives Gianfranco Rosi’s patient, eccentric documentary “Pompei: Below the Clouds” its strangely beautiful atmosphere of reflection and restlessness. Like a cagey docent who would rather guide your attention than talk your ear off, Rosi (“Fire at Sea”) trusts your own curiosity, in turn bringing thoughtful life to this city portrait of people and places.

The result — from the tunnels carved out by tomb robbers to the trains that run day and night — is a cinematic gift for the senses and specifically, to paraphrase one of the more philosophical characters, about our understanding of time’s ability to both preserve and destroy.

Shot in richly textured black and white with a fixed camera, Rosi makes the region’s present look as if it’s always teetering on the edge of a haunting archival status. He returns often to an empty, dilapidated cinema projecting the past (snatches of the silent “The Last Days of Pompeii,” Rossellini’s “Journey to Italy” and older documentaries) as if seeking kinship with earlier chroniclers. And maybe to gently remind us that moviegoing is as endangered by shifting sensibilities as are people who live in the shadow of a volcano, one whose AD 79 eruption is a civilizational marker nobody there can truly escape.

The company Rosi seeks out all seem to be stewards of that connection, whether to the weight of history or each other. There’s the lab-coated museum curator who treats statues in underground storage as dignified friends worth revisiting. A Japanese archaeological crew amid ruins and scaffolding is eager to meet undiscovered victims of Pompeii’s devastation. Even the prosecutor touring a buried villa that’s become a crime scene, illegally stripped of its frescoes, bemoans what’s been lost when thieves rob a people of their ancestors’ memories.

Meanwhile, dedicated fire department operators answer every Neapolitan’s phoned-in worry, primarily about the threat posed by their biggest, oldest neighbor, whose every belch of smoke and gas (a favorite insert shot of Rosi’s) is its own warning that time is precious. To the Syrian sailors transporting grain from Odessa, however, docking in Naples is a respite compared to the danger in their homeland and the war in Ukraine. For abiding calm and a belief in the future, there are drop-ins with veteran teacher Titti — the movie’s most endearing figure — who runs an after-school tutoring center for local schoolchildren.

There’s an intimate breadth to the warp, woof and weave of “Pompei: Below the Clouds,” which is masterfully edited by Fabrizio Federico and boasts an enveloping score by “The Brutalist” Oscar winner Daniel Blumberg. Just don’t expect to know Naples by the end. Rosi’s artistry grasps the limitations of being a long-term guest, visually juxtaposing the ancient and elemental, busts and people. Absorbing this well-chosen album is a treat, and a chance to appreciate the delicate mortality that thrives in a place simultaneously enormous, eternal and ephemeral.