You’ve heard of cringe comedy, but what about cringe horror? That might be the best way to describe the original Speak No Evil, a harrowingly uncomfortable Danish thriller that hit theaters and Shudder back in 2022, promptly doing for weekend getaways what Jaws did for the beach. Written and directed by Christian Tafdrup, the film followed a smiling couple who invite the family they meet on vacation to their home in the Dutch countryside and proceed to test the limits of how much, exactly, their guests will tolerate out of a fear of confrontation or appearing rude. Its genius was in how it toed the line between suspense and squirmy social discomfort. Though Tafdrup was clearly exploiting specific European cultural differences, his scenario had a universal dread; you could imagine it working any place where people feel bound by rules of propriety or their own permissive nature.
As if to test that theory, here now is an American studio remake. Never mind that the original was already chiefly in English, that it’s readily available to stream, and that it came out just two years ago: Any barrier to entry for a multiplex audience has been removed. New writer and director James Watkins, who made the enjoyable bump-in-the-dark Hammer horror movie The Woman in Black, has changed the names, nationalities, and a few plot details. Mostly, however, he’s carefully preserved the unsettling architecture of Tafdrup’s film. Sometimes nearly scene for scene, it’s the same movie. Until it isn’t.
The setup is basically identical. But this time, the visiting guests are Americans, newly relocated to London and going through a rough patch. Setting aside their reservations about spending a whole weekend with people they’ve just met, Louise (Mackenzie Davis) and Ben (Scoot McNairy) accept an invitation to come visit the English countryside, bringing along their 12-year-old daughter, Agnes (Alix West Lefler). Their hosts are Paddy (James McAvoy) and Ciara (The Nightingale’s Aisling Franciosi), a free-spirited, hot-blooded couple who disarm their new American friends with their carpe diem outlook. The two have a child of their own, Ant (Dan Hough), who doesn’t talk much thanks to what they describe as a medical condition that’s made his tongue too short.
Right from the start of the weekend, Paddy and Ciara begin pushing buttons – pressuring vegetarian Louise to eat the goose they’ve cooked, stiffing Ben with a big check, parenting Agnes in front of her mom and dad. Speak No Evil remains a thriller of mounting microaggressions, locating the darkest of comedy in the foibles of a vacation gone interpersonally wrong. Are these politely accommodating city slickers in danger or just having a really lousy time in the boonies? Watkins keeps that question on our minds, just as Tafdrup did.
The casting is certainly inspired. Obviously, Speak No Evil leans heavily on McAvoy, now a pro at giving us glimpses into a splintered mind. In a sense, he’s doing a more purposeful variation on the psychological gear shifts of Split, this time via a character with a little more control over his sense of self: The animal within him keeps peeking out from behind his attractively manufactured front of deceptive, salt-of-the-Earth ”authenticity.” Franciosi is chilling in a different register, turning her sincerity on and off like a valve. And the shared history between Davis and McNairy is wisely deployed, the one-time Halt and Catch Fire co-stars playing out a believable marital crisis behind the scenes of their ongoing marathon of social anxiety.
For a long while, the movie works nearly as well as its predecessor did at getting under the skin: Those new to this cruelly wince-inducing story won’t be bothered by how closely it mimics what it’s remaking. Watkins’ smartest deviation is in the particular manipulation tactics deployed by his hosts from Hell. “They’re a bit more… unvarnished,” is how Ben rationalizes the rudeness – a tell that it’s fear of cultural or class condescension that keeps his family planted in a place they’re eager to flee. Louise and Ben are prototypical guilty liberals, and Paddy and Ciara ruthlessly exploit that; when the guests come agonizingly close to getting the hell out of dodge, it’s a sob story about Ciara’s history in the care system that stops them. Meanwhile, any discomfort about leaving the kids with a strange babysitter is neutralized by Paddy’s claim that he’s a Syrian refugee who fled civil unrest.
No one could accuse this Speak No Evil of anticlimax. But they could accuse it of wimping out.
It’s in the last act that Speak No Evil really becomes its own movie, but not exactly for the better. The climax delivers the conventional excitement and the intense payoff that’s been withheld up to that point – the moment when real danger finally breaks the dramatic tension Watkins has been building, when the thriller lurking in wait emerges. The mayhem is well orchestrated, and ends up recalling a much older, already remade culture-clash horror movie set in the British country. No one could accuse this Speak No Evil of anticlimax.
But they could accuse it of wimping out. This is far from the first time a harsh European movie has been skittishly Hollywoodized. You might think of the maligned remake of The Vanishing, in which director George Sluizer complicity participated in the total defanging of his all-time downer of a thriller. Or maybe of Downhill, which turned a ruthlessly incisive portrait of fragile masculinity from Ruben Östlund – Tafdrup’s kindred spirit in Nordic discomfort – into a sitcom about a Will Ferrell dad learning to man up for his family. The original Speak No Evil was a parable of calamitous acquiescence that nightmarishly followed through on its critique, giving a reluctance to stand up for yourself a truly disturbing consequence. It brutally sliced the egos of people pleasers everywhere. This new Speak No Evil aims, at last, for roars of grateful release. The premise carried overseas, but its true power has been lost in translation.
