Netflix And Chill: Speak No Evil (2024)

There are times when everyone else seems to make time for a film that I know I won't get around to for quite a while, for all kinds of different reasons. Speak No Evil was one of those films. I just couldn't bring myself to be enthusiastic about it, despite the amount of people I know who said it was a surprisingly good remake of the original film. 

While those people were quite correct in their general assumption, I think they should have also admitted that, despite the content throughout most of the runtime, there are a number of mis-steps in the third act that make this absolutely on par with so many other remakes that exist simply due to people not wanting to read subtitles. Speak No Evil is dark and mean-spirited, for the most part, but it's defanged and neutered just in time for the end credits to roll, leaving anyone who was impressed by the original sorely dissatisfied and disappointed.

Scoot McNairy and Mackenzie Davis are Ben and Louise Dalton, a married couple with one daughter, Agnes (Alix West Lefler), and a lot of obvious tension in their relationship. While on holiday in Italy they meet Paddy (James McAvoy), Ciara (Aisling Franciosi), and their son, Ant (Dan Hough). Ant is unable to speak, but his parents are very friendly and chatty. And they invite Ben, Louise, and Agnes to visit them when they're all back in the UK some time. But things quickly become a bit strange and uncomfortable when the sheen of that "new holiday friendship" has gone and Paddy continues to tease and antagonise his guests.

Based on the original screenplay, this has been written and directed by James Watkins, possibly still a bit infamous for the darkness and horror of his debut feature, Eden Lake (one of the few films I rate very highly and never want to rewatch). Watkins is a great choice to helm this, and he's helped by the casting, which makes it even more of a shame to see how things ultimately play out. It's good that he didn't feel the need to change too much for the set-up though, which basically creates a twisted comedy of manners around the nightmarish notion that people who made casual mention of some future time socialising together actually meant what they said.

McAvoy is the overwhelming dark star of the film, dancing his way from mirth to menace repeatedly in a performance that taps into the impressive depths of scariness he's displayed in a number of other features. As the one who finds herself most often the target of his questions and barbs, Davis is also very good. Both she and McNairy play their characters with a slight snobbery and fragility that allows viewers to consider their downfall with some glee until the scales start to tip in their favour as they strive to remain calm and polite in the face of ever-increasing unpleasantness. Franciosi is on a par with everyone else, and both of the younger cast members are enjoyably natural and believable, whether they're just playing around or becoming afraid of the situation developing among the adults.

This is a good one to try and endure. And it's slightly easier to endure than the original movie. That's what makes it more entertaining and enjoyable. But it's also what leads to the biggest weakness. So, weighing up the good and the bad, I would have to rate this on a par with the original. It's a very solid thriller, and impressively dark. Until what feels like an obvious number of concessions in the third act.

7/10

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Shudder Saturday: Speak No Evil (2022)

There’s a fairly amusing, and fairly accurate, joke you can see shared online sometimes that provides British phrases with translations of what they really mean. Saying “you just come round some time” is actually not an invite. It is said out of politeness, and underscored with a real sense of dread that the person you are speaking to ever takes you up on the offer. 

Speak No Evil is, in a way, the ultimate illustration of that point. Stemming from politeness, two couples become friends while on holiday together. Bjørn (Morten Burian) and Louise (Sidsel Siem Koch) are parents to young Agnes (Liva Forsberg). Patrick (Fedja van Huêt) and Karin (Karina Smulders) have a son named Abel (Marius Damslev). The group get on so well together that Patrick and Karin invite Bjørn and Louise, and Agnes, to visit them at their home. But it's not long until things start to get tense, due to a lack of consideration from the hosts, and a number of strange incidents that out the guests on edge.

Well-acted and presented throughout, this is a really effective thriller/horror movie that works best when characters start having moments of doubt and confusion about people they then remember are complete strangers to them. There are numerous small moments in the first half of the film that begin to sow seeds of doubt, but there are also some major details signposted that ultimately make the third act slightly predictable, and inevitably anti-climactic.

Director Christian Tafdrup, who co-wrote the screenplay with his regular collaborator, and brother, Mads Tafdrup, is interested in holding viewers in a state of squirming discomfort. The first half of the movie is especially hard to watch, presenting a number of incidents that might be a bit more open to interpretation, but the second half is interesting in a way that runs surprisingly close to something like Funny Games, with the script working almost more as a mirror than a straightforward narrative piece. Viewers will question how much they themselves would have tolerated if they had been in the position of the troubled house guests, and the lack of an obvious answer makes the film all the more troubling than something that could have been a bit more straightforward. It’s just a shame that we get those final scenes, moments that undermine the film in a few different ways, but the collapse of plausibility and logic isn’t enough to ruin the whole thing entirely.

The cast all do very good work, although it must be said that Van Huêt struggles with some of the scenes that remove ambiguity from his character, and they all work well with the flowing and shifting dynamics of the scenario, whether friendly to one another, mistrusting, or openly hostile. Burian is the standout, but Koch excels in the way she portrays a woman who senses something a bit awry while her husband isn’t as bothered by it. It could have been all too easy to paint her as the hysterical woman disbelieved by everyone around her, someone we have seen onscreen a thousand times before, but both the script and her performance perfectly avoid that particular pitfall.

It is a shame that the ending brought things crashing down so suddenly for me, but I will say that I haven’t heard that being an issue for anyone else. Maybe I was being a bit too critical, which is unlike me, or maybe others were much more forgiving after being taken on such an intense, wild, ride.

7/10

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