"Stark and unsettling." "Depraved." "I never, ever want to see it again." So read the reviews of Christian Tafdrup’s Danish-Dutch production Speak No Evil (2022), a film so unflinching and unsparing it was immediately elevated (or should that be relegated?) to 'bleakest movies ever made' conversations alongside the likes of Salò, Requiem for a Dream, and Cannibal Holocaust.
No English-language remake would ever have the cojones to match it, right? Tellingly, when it was announced that Blumhouse Productions would be cranking out a redo starring James McAvoy and Mackenzie Davis, the go-to comparison was the remake of George Sluizer’s suffocating Dutch horror The Vanishing (1988). That film, labelled by Stanley Kubrick as the scariest he’d seen, ended on a crushing note of nihilism, only for the 1993 remake to flip the talking-point, WTF, no-dear-God climax – some feat given Sluizer himself was back in the director’s chair.
So, Speak No Evil 2024. Does it sanitize? Dilute? Bottle it? No spoilers here, but let’s just say that what it does do is clever, walking a thin line between honouring the original, treading its own path to justify its existence, and offering some choicely brutal surprises. Yes, brutal – the remake is, after all, written and directed by James Watkins, and anyone who’s ever seen Eden Lake (2008) is not going to accuse him of wimping out.
The premise is much the same, only with the lion’s share of the action transposed from the Netherlands countryside to a farmhouse in Devon. It starts sunnily enough in Tuscany, where milquetoast American couple Ben (Scoot McNairy) and Louise (Davis) are befriended on holiday by the more outgoing, mischievous Englishman Paddy (McAvoy) and his wife Ciara (Aisling Franciosi).
Both couples have young children; Ben and Louise’s daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler) hits it off with Paddy and Ciara’s Ant (Dan Hough), a shy lad with a congenital condition that makes it hard for him to communicate. The holiday ends with Paddy insisting that their new US pals visit them in Devon, which duly happens – perhaps a 'digital detox' in rustic England is just what Ben and Louise need to firm up their strained marriage.
Only something feels ever-so-slightly off. It starts when Paddy forgets that Louise is a vegetarian and serves up blood sausages on the first night, and even insists that she have the honour of eating the most succulent part of their farmyard goose Libbi, whom Paddy killed with his own two hands to mark their arrival. Louise, not wanting to cause a fuss, dutifully opens wide when Paddy proffers the 'yummy' tidbit on the end of a fork…
Like the original movie, Watkins’ film is, on one level at least, a pitch-black comedy of manners, with Ben and Louise suffering a series of incrementally escalating indignities because they don’t wish to offend: speak no evil and avoid awkwardness at all times. Murmuring to themselves in bed at night, they fret that it’s perhaps they who are too pampered and airy-fairy; and that Paddy, a somewhat brash bon vivant, means only well, even if he at times oversteps boundaries.
The couples’ methods of parenting certainly differ, and it’s here that the flashpoints, initially just flickers, mainly come, as Paddy not only berates his own child but starts to instruct Agnes, too. But eventually the microaggressions intensify ("Don’t put yourself down. That’s my job," he jests with a creepily infectious grin when wife Ciara actually gets a word in), until Paddy’s toxicity is fully unmasked. "Why are you doing this?" quivers Louise. "Because you let us," comes the chilling reply.
Speak No Evil is strongly acted throughout: McAvoy for one is a beast, retaining his physique from Glass, which proves perfect for this particular brand of alpha-male brute. It’s also a film that builds with great care, chiselling into cultural differences, gender disparities, relationship cracks and conflicting ideas of masculinity to ensure that every cause and effect is believable.
And when the third act arrives, any deviation it might or might not take from the original makes perfect narrative sense, while also allowing for its own agenda to be fully mapped out. The best horror remakes are not afraid to push the source material in new directions – exhibit a) The Thing; exhibit b) The Fly – and while Watkins’ movie is nowhere near the level of those masterpieces (few are), it’s shrewd, engrossing and pleasingly nasty. Just don’t expect to ever listen to The Bangles’ Eternal Flame in quite the same way again…
Speak No Evil is released in UK cinemas on September 12 and in US theaters on September 13.
For more, check out our guide to upcoming horror movies that need to be on your radar.
