Speak No Evil Review: Great European Horror Goes Hollywood in New Blumhouse
James McAvoy is so good in the Speak No Evil remake that only if you’ve seen the original will you feel like you’re being attacked.
It begins with just a chair. The first thing a smiling West Country man takes from the ever so accommodating Americans is a swimming pool chair which their daughter left a towel on. She’s in the water, technically, and there’s only a handful of items on it, but surely James McAvoy’s grinning Paddy sees that when he asks milquetoast father Ben (Scoot McNairy) if he can take it—right? The wash cloth is clearly visible, but the smile is so friendly, and his charm so ingratiating, you’re tempted to simply write it off as benign obliviousness. Plus, he’s James McAvoy!
That is the mischievously aloof opening to this week’s Speak No Evil. It’s also the beginning of the 2022 Danish movie which writer-director James Watkins (Eden Lake) and Blumhouse Productions has so brazenly remade only two years after O.G. Speak No Evil took film festivals and then horror aficionados by storm. To the credit of the American version, it’s still an effective opening, one which sets the stage for a tense genre movie that is as much social satire and a comedy of manners as it is a slow-boiling thriller.
Yet the damndest thing about watching Speak No Evil (2024) is how much those who have seen the original will feel like McNairy’s put-upon wet blanket, who’s left holding a towel in the air. Are they putting us on by doing the exact same thing again? It’s still that memorably odd fusion of cringe humor and slow-tightening dread, only now with enough Hollywood hokum sprinkled on top that it loses its bite. Even so, McAvoy really is that charming, charismatic, and a cornucopia of other alliterative compliments. You’re thus disarmed into enjoying your time in his House of Paddy.
It is also within that home that McAvoy’s inviting eyes lure our point of view characters, Ben and Louise (Mackenzie Davis). When they meet Paddy and his better half Ciara (Aisling Franciosi), all four are on holiday in Tuscany with their children of about the same age. It’s why the foursome hit it off at an Italian villa, complete with pool.
Gregarious, quick-witted, and faintly naughty, Paddy makes a big impression on Ben and, to a lesser extent, Louise. See, Ben and Louise going through a rough patch in their marriage after moving to London, so when Paddy and Ciara invite the other family to extend their vacation by spending an extra long weekend back in the west country of merry old England, bored Ben jumps at the opportunity. Meanwhile Louise, hoping not to ever upset anyone, goes along with it. As does their 11-year-old daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler), who can play with Paddy and Ciara’s mute son, Ant (Dan Hough).
At first, a long spell of summertime sunshine and copious drinking seems to be just what the marriage counselor ordered. But the longer Ben and Louise stay, the more Paddy’s forgetfulness and various cultural faux pas seem deliberate, passive aggressive, and finally sinister. Or are we just being snobs? Perhaps it’s best to not mention it, then, and just enjoy the holiday!
As a rule, I am not against American remakes. Gore Vorebinski added much in his reimagining of The Ring, and Matt Reeves brought a Hitchcockian sense of suspense to his credible, if still inferior, Let the Right One In redo. And there is frankly room for improvement on the Danish Speak No Evil. While the cleverness of Christian and Mads Tafdrup’s original screenplay is as delicious as it is cynical, the movie is so eager to lean into its metaphorical fable that its gut-punch of an ending requires one of the couples in this tale to stop behaving like plausible human beings. The ending is unforgettable… but also faintly contrived.
So again to Watkins and company’s credit, the new Speak No Evil screenplay recognizes those glib limitations and allows the choices Ben and Louise make to at least approach some semblance of reality. Adding a subplot about their marriage being in disarray gives actors of Davis and McNairy’s talent something worth exploring. But whatever additional texture is provided to our protagonists amounts to an over-correction as the movie turns an unbelievable but powerful ending into Hollywood fairy dust. It undercuts the satire so thoroughly it forgets the punchline.
Which is not to say there aren’t other things to admire about this iteration of Speak No Evil, especially if you haven’t seen the original and don’t know yet how to read Paddy’s miscues. For starters, McAvoy is positively magnetic to watch as he commits them.
A terrific actor who never feels like he’s gotten his full appreciation, McAvoy’s command of the material is as breathtaking as the Italian and English countrysides in which he operates. He’s an actor who knows how to weaponize affability like a Los Alamos contractor mining for plutonium. It’s not so much that you don’t believe Paddy when he apologizes for serving goose to his vegetarian guest; it’s that you want to believe it’s a benign gag from an otherwise solid pub mate.
It really is McAvoy’s movie, however the whole cast is impressive. Davis is particularly poignant in her more layered study of a woman who has gone along to not rock the boat up to the point where she is up to her shoulders in water, even before finding herself in a strange, remote, and isolated house. Her frustrations with Ben are never overplayed or underwritten, and her rationalizations for turning a blind eye to an eccentric seem mostly plausible. Aisling Franciosi (so good in The Nightingale) as the woman most in Paddy’s thrall is also more complex, intriguing, and perhaps tragic than she would seem at first glance.
Another shrewd addition by Watkins is making the children more active participants in the story. Whereas they seemed to be props or extensions of the adults’ mistakes and foibles in the Danish film, young Agnes and Ant are acutely aware of the tension in the household and, eventually, that the grown-ups do not have all the answers. The shadowy details of Ant’s childhood prove particularly moving in an almost entirely rewritten third act.
The truth is there is plenty to admire about Blumhouse’s Speak No Evil. And chances are if you have never seen the original movie, you will be left on the edge of your seat by the natural insidiousness of the concept, with the thriller moments as taut as ever—perhaps even more so thanks to the McAvoy of it all.
… But the thing is I have seen the original and cannot separate what this story can be from what it has been reduced to. And what it is, now, is a competent, entertaining Hollywood programmer. The kind that makes for a fun night at the multiplex and leaves the mind shortly thereafter. But the fact that was done at the expense of the Tafdrups’ unforgettably brutal and searing ending is a blunder as offensive as any of Paddy’s blue remarks. It robs the story of its thorny power and replaces it with Tinseltown twaddle. And because McAvoy is so good, I’m supposed to politely nod along as it walks off what made the original a mini-cult classic in the first place.
Sorry movie, I don’t think I will let you have that chair.
Speak No Evil is in theaters Friday, Sept. 13. Learn more about Den of Geek’s review process and why you can trust our recommendations here.
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David Crow is the movies editor at Den of Geek. He has long been proud of his geek credentials. Raised on cinema classics that ranged from…