Director: James Watkins
Writer: James Watkins
Stars: James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis, Scoot McNairy
Synopsis: When an American family is invited to spend the weekend at the idyllic country estate of a charming British family they befriended on vacation, what begins as a dream holiday soon warps into a snarled psychological nightmare.
Let us go back in time to April 17, 2023. One month and five days have passed since the 95th Academy Awards, at which Everything Everywhere All at Once dominated, winning seven Oscars, including Best Picture. Two weeks ago, an indictment of the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump, was approved by a Manhattan grand jury, charging the former commander in chief with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to hide payments he made to Stormy Daniels. The first weekend of Coachella is about to begin. New York City has just appointed its first-ever rat czar. Classified documents from within the Pentagon’s five walls are circulating online. Yet if you’re anything like me, all you can focus on is Film Updates’ latest tweet.
“James McAvoy to star in Blumhouse’s remake of ‘SPEAK NO EVIL’ from director James Watkins. In theaters August 9, 2024.”
Meanwhile, you have yet to process the ending of the original Speak No Evil, a truly terrifying picture that reached all-time levels of the unsettling and deranged, the likes of which horror cinema had never seen prior to its release. Christian Dafdrup’s original nightmare, one of the best films of 2022, had barely captured the attention of the public conscience when Film Updates – damn you, Film Updates – re-reported Deadline’s news that the movie was being remade by James Watkins. Sure, you liked the season-three episode of Black Mirror he directed, “Shut Up and Dance,” as much as anyone can truly like that episode. (It was smart, disturbing, and left you wanting to throw away technology forever.) But not only did Speak No Evil (‘22) feel like a film that should exist as a singular work of dread, it was only released wide on September 9, 2022. The body was barely cold before they decided to produce a clone.
I’ll be frank: I was curious to see how Watkins, McAvoy, and co. would handle remaking a film that most American audiences would struggle to digest – sorry to spoil a movie that is nearly two years old, but the original’s ending sees the protagonists get brutally murdered after their daughter’s tongue is cut out – but I wasn’t in much of a rush. Despite Tafdrup’s film being among the more uniquely messed up films I’ve ever seen, I didn’t feel it was my civic duty to protect his work by protesting its Americanized redux. (I’m only one man; not only can I not stop a Universal-Blumhouse contingent, but there are far more important things to protest these days.) So it surprises me and borderline breaks my heart to say that Watkins’ version of Speak No Evil is… fine. It’s competent as a Hollywood horror product, well-acted, and entertaining enough to sit through. At no point did I feel like I was wasting two hours of my time checking it out. Plus, I got another peak at the trailer for Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu. (Ironically, a remake, though as one of The Northman’s number-one defenders, I’d trust him with my life.)
But this is precisely what makes 2 Speak 2 Evil’s existence that much more troublesome: It’s meaningless. Without spoiling any specifics, there are only a few original things that Watkins’ film brings to the table, among them being a few character intricacies that fit American and British couples rather than Danish and Dutch ones, a more telegraphed plot, and a different, more hopeful conclusion. If the goal here was literally to whip up the same recipe, just with a few ingredients swapped in and out in order to avoid allergic reactions from more delicate audiences, then Watkins and his actors have succeeded. But what about that makes for a remotely interesting product? There are almost certainly a scant few folks, in the grand scheme of things, who will have seen both the 2022 original and the 2024 remake, but for those who have, did you feel any sort of rush when watching the new iteration? Or did you feel as though you were watching a dumbed-down version of a film you recognized, one with significantly less ambition and almost none of the shock value? (I’ll take my answer off the air.)
For the readers who are asking themselves, “What in the Danish hell is this lunatic ranting about?”, let’s take a moment to set the stage regarding the subject of this review: Speak No Evil tells the story of Ben (Scoot McNairy) and Louise (Mackenzie Davis), an American couple now living in London – after Ben lost his job and needed a white privilege-flavored reset – who take a much-needed vacation to Italy with their pre-teen daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler). Not only is Ben unemployed, but his wife has been having a sext-ual relationship with one of the father’s at Agnes’ school; things are rocky in the Dalton household. An unexpected respite, at least on the surface, comes in the form of Paddy (McAvoy) and Ciara (Aisling Franciosi), a free-spirited British couple with a young verbally-impaired son called Ant (Dan Hough). The adults get along and the kids get on; who doesn’t love some vacation friends? Alas, this doesn’t star John Cena nor Lil Rel Howery, so the movie doesn’t end with this foursome sipping cocktails by the pool. Instead, Paddy and Ciara become insistent that the Daltons join them for a future getaway at the former’s farmhouse in the countryside. However hesitant they are post-receipt of this invitation, Ben and Louise agree that it would benefit Agnes to spend some time with a kid close to her own age. Plus, they don’t have many friends in London.
So, they decide to go, further admitting that another holiday might add to their marriage’s lifespan. That is, until Paddy and Ciara start behaving oddly, to say the least. While in Italy, Louise made it clear that she was a vegetarian, yet upon arrival in the country, Paddy all but force-feeds her a piece of the prize goose he slaughtered that morning for them to have later in the evening. In the middle of their first night in the home, as the four parents share a few after-dinner drinks, Ant is heard wailing upstairs as though in pain; Ben and Louise express alarm, while Paddy and Ciara leave it alone, saying he’ll eventually calm down. (True, but at what cost?) While out for a meal one night, Ciara pretends to go down on Paddy below the table cloth, as he mimics sexual moans; they then offer to “swap” with Ben and Louise, a great idea that the struggling couple turns down cold. The darkest uncomfortable element of the many is how abusive Paddy is with his wife and son; bruises are noticeable on Ciara’s arm, and he straight-up tosses Ant around like a rag doll. Of course, the youngster can’t object due to the fact that he lacks a tongue. Wonder what happened there…
That’s where the plot summary must cease, for everything that happens over the remaining hour and change leads to the film’s attempt at revamping the original’s ending. In terms of its success in doing so, again: It’s fine. In terms of the film’s principal performances, namely from its top-billed trio of McAvoy, Davis, and McNairy, they keep things churning along at a pace that never makes one check their watch. McAvoy, who is approximately the size of a Ford F-150 here, operates on full tilt, his menacing, creepy-eyed nature persisting from the moment he lifts the Dalton’s extra pool chair as though it’s a Cheerio at the beginning of the film to when he… well, gets up to some stuff as it winds down. (He says generously.) Davis and McNairy have authentic chemistry as a couple under duress, with the former serving as the wife who has only grown aloof due to her dissatisfaction in a loveless marriage and the latter serving as the husband who only flicks out of rest mode when his family’s lives may be at stake. Even Franciosi and the pre-teens bring their own naive notions to the film, providing a light touch even as sinister events are constantly afoot.
Yet as far as the film itself goes, it devolves from its reserved-yet-unsettling start – one that is almost score-less, with little to no music coming between its title card and its first big “twist” – to a standard “something is wrong here” horror flick, one chock-full of chases, gunshots, and bloody wounds, the likes of which you’ve seen before and will see again. If Speak No Evil’s existence wasn’t already disappointing enough, things would be even more dire considering how flat it becomes down the stretch. The madder McAvoy’s Paddy becomes, the less bone-chilling its potential gets. Davis and McNairy’s screams fall silent, as though they were never there at all; they might as well not be, given how pedestrian they feel in a film that relies so heavily on being recognizable.
One might argue that it’s unfair, even irresponsible, to compare a remake to its original. Watkins does take a gander at refreshing a few of the ideas that the original raises, and not just in taming Tafdrup’s much-discussed ending. But I find the exact opposite to be true: The root of criticism is stacking art up against other works, even if those others aren’t explicitly referenced in every critique. There is a gold standard; does Exhibit A meet the criteria, or set one of its own? Neither Speak No Evils come all that close to the pinnacle, but the disadvantage that Speak No Evil (‘24) handed itself on a silver platter is that it is working in direct debate, not conversation, with its source material. One can’t blame the actors – at the very least, we know that James McAvoy did not watch the original before he wrapped on the remake – nor can one blame the filmmaker for taking a job. The system itself, though, and the brass that puts regurgitated I.P. like this out into the world? To speak enough evil about that, we’d need to waste a lot more of our valuable time, to the point where we’d want to cut out our own tongues to end the process. Take it from me: It doesn’t look to be worth it.
Speak No Evil is now playing in theaters and available to buy or rent on digital.
