Movie Review: SPEAK NO EVIL

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: September 13th, 2024 / 04:43 AM

SPEAK NO EVIL movie poster | ©2024 Universal Picturesl

Rating: R
Stars: James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis, Scoot McNairy, Aisling Franciosi, Alix West Lefler, Dan Hough, Kris Hitchen, Motaz Malhees
Writer: James Watkins, based on the screenplay by Christian Tafdrup & Mads Tafdrup
Director: James Watkins
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Release Date: September 13, 2024

Anyone who saw the original 2022 Danish horror thriller SPEAK NO EVIL is bound to wonder what a big-studio English-language remake would be like. This is because big studios do not make movies entirely like the original 2022 Danish horror thriller SPEAK NO EVIL.

This is not a matter of quality or integrity. Contrary to popular lore, studios do take risks all the time, with subject matter, with styles, with filmmakers. But they’re not going to spend money they won’t recoup on something so dark, and such a gut punch, that even some admirers of the first SPEAK NO EVIL say that they’d just as soon not see it again. (For those made curious by this introduction, the film is available on AMC+ and FreeVee.)

This is a testament to the power of the 2022 original, but it also means that at a certain point, the funding entity would prefer to make something that potentially will bring back return viewers, who may even bring friends along.

There’s also the matter of what American audiences will and won’t accept in terms of behavior. What we may merely question in a culture clash between Danish and Dutch characters, we won’t suspend disbelief for when it comes to Americans and Britons.

Director/writer James Watkins is faithful to a point with the 2024 version of SPEAK NO EVIL, adapted from the 2022 script by Christian Tafdrup (who directed the first film) & Mads Tadrup.

The premise and set-up are largely the same. Two vacationing couples, each with a young child, meet each other in Italy and strike up a warm relationship.

Here, one couple consists of Ben (Scoot McNairy) and Louise (Mackenzie Davis), Americans who have moved to London for Ben’s job. They’ve stayed there even though the job fell through. Their eleven-year-old daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler) is mostly a sweet little girl, though overly attached to her stuffed animal Hoppy.

The other couple are Paddy (James McAvoy) and Ciara (Aisling Franciosi). They are from County Devon in southwest England. Their little boy Ant (Dan Hough) doesn’t speak. Paddy explains that Ant was born with a tongue that did not fully develop.

Paddy and Ciara say they want Ben, Louise and Agnes to visit for a weekend. They are so committed to this that they send a written invitation through the mail. Louise is a little hesitant, but Ben thinks it might do them all good.

For a while, what we have is a dark comedy of manners, with Ben and Louise unsure of how to react to awkwardness with Paddy and Ciara. Is this innocent social misunderstanding, or intentional micro-aggression?

The first half of SPEAK NO EVIL conforms relatively closely to its predecessor, albeit there is some deepening of characters who got shorter shrift in the original.

Then the nature of the danger is revealed, along with its accompanying back story, which provides full horror bona fides on its own. A different character makes the discovery here, which makes it feel more tragic and urgent.

And then SPEAK NO EVIL, while still fully living up to its R rating for blood and violence, changes course.

This is largely to the good. Filmmaker Watkins fills in a lot of plot holes from the earlier film with a simple line of dialogue, a change of language, or a photograph. It makes it easier for us to avoid balking at narrative points, and also keeps us easily invested in what’s happening.

Something else that Watkins does is deftly delineate the differences between Louise and Ben. She is quicker to take and (at first politely) express offense, whereas Ben wants to keep the peace because he craves the big brother masculinity that Paddy offers.

Fans of the excellent and under-seen TV series HALT AND CATCH FIRE will delight in seeing Davis and McNairy as wife and husband (they were computer whiz colleagues in HALT). There is probably a college thesis paper to be written on Ben’s journey throughout SPEAK NO EVIL. For the purposes of this review, we’ll just stipulate that McNairy enacts every stage of it with empathy and conviction.

Davis delivers Louise’s occasional zingers with expert timing, and makes us believe her character is capable of the script’s demands. She sometimes goes big on silent astonishment, but what she’s reacting to is fairly astonishing.

McAvoy is a wonderful chameleon as Paddy, charming, supportive, mischievous, enraged, or icy as the scene demands.

Franciosi is beguiling and keeps us guessing until the end as Ciara. Lefler is natural as the plaintive Agnes, and Hough is compelling as Ant.

SPEAK NO EVIL has different satisfactions and different messages than its progenitor. It emerges as a discussion-worthy horror thriller that uses an existing foundation to become something different but worthwhile, which sticks with us after it ends.

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