Searchlight PicturesThey say if you love something, set it free — and sometimes, if you’re lucky, that thing will return in the form of a blood-soaked sequel. That’s at least the case for Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, the directors known as the film collective Radio Silence. For a duo that’s quickly become synonymous with a handful of lucrative horror franchises, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett are surprisingly averse to the idea of sequels. Since their “serendipitous” meeting in the offices of New Line Cinema, they’ve worked inseparably and intensely on shared visions of gore and epic spectacle — but their “f*cking allergy” to unnecessary follow-ups might be their strongest shared passion.“The idea that you create something that intentionally is like opening a door to continue the story, it always feels a little bit like ‘But do you need to?’” Bettinelli-Olpin tells Inverse. The duo directs every film as if it’s the last one the duo will ever get to make: Each of their projects, from the soft reboot of Scream to 2019’s Ready or Not, is meant to stand on its own. The latter especially was designed as a one-and-done for Radio Silence, and most assumed the same of Ready or Not. After all, how much further can you take the concept of a Faustian deal, a deadly game of hide-and-seek, and a satanic ritual so explosive it makes the Red Wedding look like a day at the park?“How many times do you say ‘Hail Satan!’ before it maybe is real?”That challenge gets its answer in Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, the sequel that Radio Silence never thought they’d ever make. Standing on the other side of it, though, the directors seem happy they did. “Ready or Not was just always the first thing that came to mind whenever we had like, a moment to breathe,” Gillett says. It helps that Guy Busick and R. Christopher Murphy, the screenwriters behind the first Ready or Not, had already done the work to expand the underworld run by “Mr. Le Bail” and the council of families doing his bidding on this earthly plane. That foundation gave Bettinelli-Olpin, Gillett, and star Samara Weaving a way back into the franchise. While her final girl, Grace, is forced to don her bloody wedding gown once more to fight even more of Le Bail’s lackeys, you shouldn’t expect a total rehash of the original. Ready or Not 2 retains the spirit of its predecessor, but it also dives deeper into the blackened heart of this secret society, presenting a major challenge for its filmmakers. Ahead of the film’s premiere, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett sat down with Inverse to unpack their “yes, and” approach to their beloved horror breakout.This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett at the Ready or Not 2 premiere. | JC Olivera/Variety/Getty ImagesSo, to what extent do y’all actually believe in Satan?Tyler Gillett: [Laughs.] God, right out of the gate. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin: Amazing first question. Gillett: I love it.Bettinelli-Olpin: I mean, I was raised a Catholic. I don’t consider myself Catholic anymore, but, you know, I went to Catholic high school. You’re sort of steeped in it — sort of hate all of it, if I’m being totally honest. But I’m not gonna say I don’t believe in stuff.Gillett: I’m firmly “I don’t know what I believe.” I wasn’t raised religious, and so I don’t have a strong belief in it. But I do feel like… I mean, part of the fun of working in the genre is like, framing the chaos of the world with some form of mythology around it, which feels like it’s just part of the fun of the first Ready or Not, and certainly this one as well. We did have a sort of running joke on set, particularly in the temple sequence at the end, where we were like, “How many times do you say ‘Hail Satan!’ before it maybe is real?” The idea that you might accidentally call something out of the darkness, there were so many running gags about that. It’s not a thing you want to f*ck with. I’m not a believer, but I also don’t want to test.Bettinelli-Olpin: When we were filming those scenes, Tyler, you were the one doing the call and response with the background actors. And I was like, “I am opting out of this.”After the third “Hail Satan!” you are kind of like, “OK… all right…”Bettinelli-Olpin: Why poke the bear, whether it’s there or not?The introduction of Grace’s sister, Faith, turns Ready or Not 2 into an unconventional love story. | Searchlight PicturesThere’s so much symmetry between Ready or Not and Here I Come, even down to the opening. I love how you bridge the gap between the ending of Part 1 and Grace’s trip to the hospital with that oner [that begins Part 2]. How difficult was that to plan and shoot?Gillett: It was so difficult, it was so difficult. I do feel like the difficulty was in the planning of it though, right, Matt? I mean, well — and then once we had shot it, it was actually making it photorealistic, the handoff.Bettinelli-Olpin: Which took a long time [and] many, many versions. But I feel like it’s different phases; Phase 1 was like, “How are we going to get into this movie?” The idea was always there that it picked up right after [Ready or Not], but how we were actually going to shoot it was something that we and our [director of photography], Brett [Jutkiewicz], talked about… I mean, all of pre-production. It feels like it was sort of a late idea, where Brett was like, “What if we just put a doggy cam on her and just go with it?”“The first movie’s such an anti-love story; what if this is a love story?”Gillett: Then over the course of actually completing that shot, our [visual effects] supervisor — this very wonderful, brilliant artist named Matt Whelan — he kept telling us, “Guys, being able to pull this off, we all have to really manage our expectations because what the ask is, it’s just beyond what most effects houses are capable of doing.”We had a version where a character walked across the frame and we were kind of hiding the transition there, but we just kept hammering away at these artists and just saying, “Oh, we’re so close.” You make micro-adjustments and micro-adjustments, and pretty soon, it’s close enough. And we were like, “I don’t know if we even need the frame wipe.” And look, it’s really kudos to the VFX house, Lola, that pulled that off. The painstaking rotoscope work and matching all those shots… it just really is truly a work of art that they were able to so seamlessly blend the same character, seven years apart. And it’s also a miracle that Samara hasn’t aged a single day.After the duo worked with Kathryn Newton on Abigail, the actor became a crucial “puzzle piece” for Ready or Not 2. | Searchlight PicturesAnd pairing her with Kathryn Newton — was bringing her into this a no-brainer?Bettinelli-Olpin: I’d say that meeting Kathryn and working with her on Abigail was, in a lot of ways, one of many puzzle pieces, but maybe the final puzzle piece that we needed to find our own way into this movie. Because in the versions that we had prior… We tried to [add] another character, and it was always good and it was really well-written, but it didn’t have that emotional impact that the Alex-and-Grace relationship has in the first one. While we were working with Kathryn on Abigail, we had a moment of, “Oh, man, Sam and Kathryn have similar energies. They could easily be sisters; we should think about that.”We actually wrote a whole pilot for them, just to get it out of our system. And then that’s when we got the call from Tripp [Vinson], our producer, saying, “Hey, would you guys think about coming back to this?” And our first thought was, “Wait a minute, what if we take that idea and put it into Ready or Not?” We loved [that] it made Grace more complex, and that she had been hiding something in the first movie, and that she had this family, but she’s trying to reject it and create something new, and then that’s failed. The first movie’s such an anti-love story; what if this is a love story? Kathryn was kind of the key to unlocking that.Grace has always been the emotional core of this franchise. | Searchlight PicturesReady or Not 2 really holds up a mirror to Ready or Not. You’re revisiting some beats without making it feel like just a copy-paste “that same movie but more” kind of sequel. How’d you keep that balance between sprinkling in bits of the first film that audiences really loved, and upping the ante?Bettinelli-Olpin: I think a lot of that has to do with Samara; keeping Grace as the core.Gillett: I think outside of that, it was really being sure, and really challenging each other. It really was, a game of “yes, and” to make sure that the moments that feel like they’re drafting heavily on the first movie are immediately followed by something that is like surprising or a subversion or an expansion. That was a real fear of ours, making something that felt like nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. For as much as we love that first movie, we’re not interested in repeating ourselves… I’m thinking about the f*cking allergy we had to those quick flashes...When Grace is being resuscitated?Gillett: Lyvie, we fought that with every fiber of our being. For viewers who are familiar with and aren’t familiar with the first movie, you have to sort of be reminded of the stakes of the world… I think we really love the utility of where we ended up in those moments, and with the use of that footage. But even that was, like, a real conversation for us, because we wanted to make something that was really, for as much as it’s in conversation with the first movie, is its own f*cking thing.You’re tackling the Mummy next, and I’m so fascinated by this matchup. I’m assuming it can’t be quite so bloody as the stuff we’re used to seeing from you guys… or can it?Bettinelli-Olpin: [Laughs.] It’ll be PG-13.Gillett: But I think we’re going to try to push that. We’re going to find the edge and I’m sure we’ll step over the line and then we’ll be told to walk it back. But I mean, we will take risks. We can tell you that we are going to take some risks with that project in some really fun ways.Ready or Not 2: Here I Come is now playing in theaters.