Cold American couple Ben (Scott McNairy) and Louise (Mackenzie Davis) meet Brits Paddy (James McAvoy) and Ciara (Aisling Franciosi) on an Italian holiday and accept an invitation to spend a weekend with them in the West Country. However, it becomes clear that the charming hosts have a sinister hidden agenda.
Kristian Tavdrup’s 2022 horror film Speak No Evil – available on Shudder – was a riveting and haunting psychological portrait of well-mannered Danish people who unwisely agree to spend a weekend away with the hearty Dutch family they met on holiday and are subjected to many, many… Small problems. – Attacks before starting the macro. For a while, James Watkins’s English-language remake is close to the original… and then the films diverge (around the time of the agonizing decision to go back to get the daughter’s toy rabbit) and become different, albeit complementary experiences.
There’s no denying that the first movie was annoying, and after you’ve seen it you won’t want to go back, so the new twists are satisfying. James McAvoy, the Mummerset tough guy and imposing physique who spends so much time in the gym, has an intimidating, charismatic presence. He’s never played an all-out villain before, and he goes to town with this, repeatedly committing some unforgivable assault on his guests before taking it back and begging for sympathy, or acting hurt that they’re insulted and putting it off for a few more hours. Even as evidence piles up about the depth of the hole they fall into.
Director James Watkins is very good at ratcheting up the screws.
Both of Watkins’s major horror films – Eden Lake, and The Woman In Black – are fairly ruthless in killing off characters who should be safe in the genre, which is in keeping with his vision of the bleakness of the film Tafdrop. However, this fight is fairer, and the Straw Dogs-ish farm battle pays off dramatically with several moments of creating lethal weapons for Chekhov to use later, leading to additional revelations that add flavour.
The theme of this story in both versions is suspense, and Watkins is very good at tightening the screws – depicting moments like a potential escape, a moment that the villain seems happy to let unfold, in a way that causes his companion to compare him to “my aunt’s cat” as he insists on playing with his food – but it also emerges from Satisfying repercussions and rewards.
It’s not Speak No Evil (2022) – so what’s the point? – But Speak No Evil (2024) is a quality horror-suspense picture.
