Speak No Evil

by Mike McGranaghan

The excellent 2022 Danish thriller Speak No Evil has an astonishingly bleak ending, the kind that you can’t get out of your head afterward. When I heard the movie was getting an American remake, I worried the ending would be Hollywoodized. Now the Universal/Blumhouse version is here, and they’ve done exactly what I feared. That sums up the movie as a whole. It’s a decent adaptation that works fine but will play better if you haven’t seen the superior original.

Ben (Scoot McNairy) and Louise (Mackenzie Davis) are on vacation in Italy with their daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler). They become friendly with another couple, Paddy (James McAvoy) and Ciara (Aisling Franciosi), and their mute son Ant (Dan Hough). Months go by and they receive an invitation from Paddy to spend a weekend at their remote countryside estate in Wales. As soon as they show up, their hosts begin exhibiting weird, cringy behavior, coercing the vegetarian Louise into sampling meat and bringing in a sketchy babysitter for the kids while the adults go out for an evening.

Tension in the story is created by the fact that Ben and Louise excuse away these strange behaviors out of fear of being impolite. She picks up on the red flags more than he does, but he has a way of convincing her to ignore them. By the time the couple realizes what Paddy and Ciara are really up to, they’re mired in a nightmarish scenario they might not escape alive from.

Writer/director James Watkins plays some of these things for dark comedy, whereas original director Christian Tafdrup milked them for every bit of discomfort possible, making viewers almost literally squirm in the process. Either way, the structure of the story is strong enough to draw you in. Speak No Evil builds suspense from the idea that ignoring the little voice in the back of your head that says something isn’t right can have devastating repercussions. The remake retains that quality where you get unnerved by Ben and Louise repeatedly refusing to see what’s right in front of their faces.

McAvoy is perfect for the role of Paddy, credibly creating an off-kilter vibe that helps justify his friends’ hesitance to leave. The actor balances charm and menace, sometimes simultaneously. Davis and McNairy generally hit the right notes as the slow-to-catch-on couple. She plays Louise with an appropriate bit of panic; he gives Ben a bewildered quality inferring that he’s afraid of rocking the boat. The cast members collectively keep the interactions between the characters unsettling.

As for the ending, it completely alters the point of the story. What Watkins comes up with is fine, if conventional, giving the audience a sense of catharsis that the Danish version intentionally denied. Anyone who has seen the previous film will feel a sense of disappointment that the American Speak No Evil chickens out on going there, whereas newcomers won’t know what they’re missing. Again, the remake offers a more traditional viewing experience, as opposed to one that sends you away feeling sick to your stomach.

You really should see the Danish movie. But if you’re not inclined to watch a foreign film – or get shaken right down to your soul – the Blumhouse Speak No Evil is sufficiently tense on its own merits.

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