Christian Tafdrup’s acclaimed 2022 Danish thriller Speak No Evil derived squirm-inducing suspense from its portrait of escalating social transgressions and the passivity that allows them to proliferate.
A mere two years later, writer/director James Watkins remakes that international hit in the English language with a variety of tweaks that don’t rectify its source material’s primary shortcoming (namely, a finale that relied too heavily on apt, if unbelievable, behavior) but do manage to undercut nearly all its memorable strengths. Whereas action expressed theme in Tafdrup’s original, theme merely embellishes action in Watkins’ version—a switcharoo that makes this do-over a case study in Hollywoodization gone awry.
Duplicating its predecessor quite closely for its opening two acts, Speak No Evil, which hits theaters Sept. 13, is the story of Ben (Scoot McNairy) and Louise Dalton (Mackenzie Davis), who along with their 11-year-old daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler) are on an Italian vacation that’s fraught with simmering tensions. On multiple occasions, Louise chides Agnes about speaking too loudly, and it eventually becomes clear that this is a symptom of her and Ben’s inability to openly converse.
If the trio’s rapport is frosty, however, it’s temporarily assuaged when Agnes loses her beloved stuffed rabbit (to whom she’s still attached, much to Ben’s frustration) and they bump into Paddy (James McAvoy), his wife Ciara (Aisling Franciosi), and their son Ant (Dan Hough), who’s mute due to a rare condition that’s left him with a half-formed tongue. Convinced to get lunch together by the gregarious and charming Paddy, the two families quickly hit it off, to the point that Paddy invites Ben, Louise, and Agnes to visit his remote English farm.
Back in rainy London, to which they’ve relocated due to a job offer for Ben that subsequently washed out, they receive a postcard from Paddy. Despite Louise’s initial hesitation and their joint admission that they don’t know these strangers very well, they take Paddy and Ciara up on their offer, driving into the middle of nowhere to stay at their cozy rural home.
No sooner have they arrived than things get awkward, with Ben presenting them with a prized cooked goose and pressuring Louise to try the first, juiciest bite, even though she’s previously told him that she’s a vegetarian. Subsequent pleasantries and easygoing times are spiked with similar strangeness, be it a hike that’s marred by Ant’s refusal to get out of the way so Agnes can use a swing, or a dinner at a local restaurant that features a testy back-and-forth about Louise’s dietary choices and Paddy and Ciara being sexually inappropriate in front of their guests—and then sticking them with the bill.
These and other incidents are taken from Tafdrup’s film, as is quite a bit of its dialogue, and yet Watkins’ Speak No Evil generates scant early discomfort. Part of this is because the material is paced too fast; Paddy and Ciara’s unexpected conduct isn’t allowed to linger in the air long enough to turn everything bizarre and unnerving.
The rhythm of the piece is entirely off, and making matters worse, its script repeatedly has Paddy follow-up his weirdness with excuses that aren’t believable and diffuse the proceedings’ anxiety. More frustrating still, it ditches the original’s culture-clash element (which contributed to the couples’ confusion and disconnection) while adding exposition that explains Ben and Louise’s personal and marital issues in leaden terms and renders them simplistic variations on their cinematic ancestors.
The greater Speak No Evil rehashes, the more it stumbles, botching a variety of scenes in an effort to make Ben and Louise less unlikable and Paddy and Ciara obviously villainous. Its alterations in its back half, alas, aren’t better.
Though unable to speak, Ant soon begins struggling to convey the horrible truth about his clan to Agnes, and his success in this mission inevitably results in Ben and Louise—who’ve already tried and failed to flee the house—doing their best to avoid falling prey to their hosts. The chief problem with Tafdrup’s import was that it tried too hard to underline its protagonists’ cowardly apathy, in the process sacrificing believability for thematic coherence. Watkins, on the other hand, makes Ben and Louise exceedingly active and reactive. Yet in doing so, he transforms his endeavor into just a protracted, run-of-the-mill cat-and-mouse game between innocent victims and sadistic psychopaths.
There’s no mystery to Speak No Evil, and even less disquieting creepiness; instead, it’s a bludgeoning beast, epitomized by McAvoy’s Paddy, a buff patriarch whose oft-spied muscles make plain that he’s a menacing guy. McAvoy’s performance has none of the nuance or flair of his best work (like his bravura turn in M. Night Shyamalan’s Split), and his co-stars are similarly one-note, largely due to writing that tells rather than shows.
That said, it doesn’t really matter if Ben and Louise are complicated and flawed individuals or thin archetypes, since Watkins reveals with his conclusion that he doesn’t care about these people, their dynamics, or the way in which their conflict speaks to societal customs, expectations, and demands. What he’s interested in is lengthy, clichéd mayhem, full of barricaded doors, perilous rooftops, and copious stabbing, shooting, punching, falling, screaming, and squirting.
Like the American copies of George Sluizer’s The Vanishing and Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure (the chief inspirations for Tafdrup’s original), Watkins’ Speak No Evil betrays its tale by reworking it into a conventional B-movie potboiler devoid of the tonal and narrative idiosyncrasies that made it remake-worthy in the first place.
Its visuals are flat, its score is flatter, and its gutsiness is non-existent. Substituting psychological and interpersonal frictions for turgid skirmishes, the film rants and rampages without being surprising or scary, and its ultimate interest in comforting its audience is embarrassing.
Taking the easy way out probably struck those involved as a safer way of appealing to a mainstream domestic audience that (supposedly) prefers resolution to ambiguity, triumph to tragedy. Nonetheless, it’s hard to imagine a single soul finding this thriller anything more than dull and routine, much less preferring it to its imperfect but superior precursor.
