“It’s hard to say no, isn’t it?” – Paddy, played by James McAvoy in Speak No Evil (2024)
Back in the early days of 2022, I sat down for my first (and only to-date) viewing of some Sundance Film Festival titles from the comfort of my own home via their now defunct virtual festival. One of the films I decided to imbibe at the very last moment was Christian Tafdrup’s Speak No Evil (Gæsterne), a mostly English-language Danish horror film I had heard some rumblings on, but really knew nothing about. What ensued was 98 minutes of some of the most genuinely dread-inducing, horrendously stressful, genuinely affecting horror filmmaking I had ever seen. It preyed upon the small awkward contrivances we put up with as social beings to avoid conflict, and the circular nature of such avoidance ending in perhaps the most confrontational way possible. It’s a bleak, terrifying film, one that I frankly never imagined being adapted into an American film since, despite carrying a Danish title card, the original is mostly in English, but alas, the ways of Hollywood are as such, and less than three years later, we have been blessed with an American studio remake from Blumhouse with a stacked cast, and … a hell of a lot less bite.
L to R: Ant (Dan Hough), Ciara (Aisling Franciosi), and Paddy (James McAvoy) in SPEAK NO EVIL, directed by James Watkins. Photo courtesy of Susie Allnutt/Universal Pictures and Blumhouse. © Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.
While vacationing in Italy, London-based American family the Daltons, with father Ben (Scoot McNairy), mother Louise (Mackenzie Davis), and daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler), meet the Felds, an amiable, outgoing British family of father Patrick aka “Paddy” (James McAvoy), mother Ciara (Aisling Franciosi), and mute son Ant (Dan Hough). Charmed by their laissez-faire attitude and free-wheeling nature, the Daltons accept an invitation from Paddy to spend a weekend at their remote farm in the Devon countryside. While the beginning of the trip starts off as normal, the Daltons find themselves thrown off by the Felds’ uncouth nature, unsettling behavior, and general lack of hospitality. Too afraid to broach the issue, the Daltons silently tolerate their treatment, until, as the weekend progresses, it becomes clear that their new friends are more dangerous than they once thought, and thanks to their fear of offending them socially, the Daltons are trapped.
For a good long while in Speak No Evil, I found myself rather impressed with the way director James Watkins (The Woman in Black) was able to effectively capture the petty social awkwardness that pervades the first half of the original film so wonderfully, all while still switching some things up and recontextualizing some aspects of the film to fit American audiences. These aren’t things that are given the space to breathe in other remakes, and I commend Watkins for taking the time to do so with this screenplay, at least in its first half.
L-R: Agnes Dalton (Alix West Lefler), Louise Dalton (Mackenzie Davis) and Ben Dalton (Scoot McNairy) in SPEAK NO EVIL, directed by James Watkins. Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures and Blumhouse. © Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.
The film is also perfectly cast, with each role being filled wonderfully and accurately to the source, but again, with different recontextualizations which make this shuffling around work in its own unique way. While many reviews point out McAvoy (Trance) as a standout amongst the cast, I actually found the work of both McNairy (Monsters) and Davis (Izzy Gets the F*ck Across Town) to really be the true standouts of the film, perfectly capturing two sides of the same pathetic coin of American yuppie. The type of New York (or in this case London) transplant who has tons of opinions about others, but struggles to make a doctor’s appointment for themselves over the phone without having to take half a Xanax 30 minutes beforehand to prepare for it. It’s not that they aren’t sympathetic, but one can be both sniveling and sympathetic in the same breath, even if they kiiiiiiiiinda brought this upon themselves in theory. It’s a wonderfully subtle portrait of two people who are pathetic in their own unique ways.
Now, that’s not to say I didn’t think McAvoy and Franciosi (The Nightinggale) weren’t good in the film, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from this entire experience, it’s that comparison is the thief of joy, and I simply can’t help but do that here. There’s something so much more chilling about the calm, slow method of escalation at play in the original film, and while the first half of the film does that well, the second half, as shit begins to hit the proverbial fan, these “Are they or aren’t they insane?” characters morph into something a lot less subtle and a bit more cartoonish than what was done so minutely by Fedja Van Huêt (Invasion) and Karina Smulders (Wil). It certainly means that McAvoy and Franciosi are having a hell of a lot more giddy fun as these more devious antagonists, but they definitely don’t quite fulfill the brief of being “terrifyingly friendly,” just rather over-the-top demons. It never really steals the thrill of it all, but it certainly makes them less genuinely frightening forces.
L-R: Paddy (James McAvoy) and Ciara (Aisling Franciosi) in SPEAK NO EVIL, directed by James Watkins. Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures and Blumhouse. © Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.
And that’s where Speak No Evil loses me in its second half, its insistence on being a thriller, and not a dread-soaked horror film that moves at a slow pace until it absolutely doesn’t. With more action, jumpscares, and an aversion to bleakness, it ends up becoming the thing that I figured a Blumhouse-produced American remake of such a shockingly blunt European film would be. Thanks to the effort put into the rest of the production, it didn’t make me as annoyed as I would’ve expected myself to be on paper, but there’s still a genuine lack of bite that’s missing, and, unfortunately, while it can serve as a complete film without that bite, it also creates something that I think misses the entire point of Tafdrup’s original and, in turn, renders itself rather redundant.
Now, I hear you screaming at your screen: Will you stop talking about the original film and tell me whether or not this film is worth my time on its own? And to that I say … sure, why not? Again, the film is well-directed for the most part, and, without comparison to anything else, the entire cast does quite good work across the board. The concept is still absolute knockout, and I’d say you get about 60% of what works so wonderfully about the original film here. That’s more than most remakes do, and I give it credit for that. I would even go so far to say that if you only see this version, you’ll still get the general gist of it all, even if you don’t get the suckerpunch that made the original one of my favorite horror films of the past decade.
I want American films to be unafraid to abuse their audiences just a little bit.
In theaters September 13th, 2024.
For more information, head to the official Universal Pictures Speak No Evil website.
Final Score: 2.5 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
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