Alex Wheeler Movie Ops

We do this every time. A foreign film makes a minor splash and the rights are snatched up immediately, an adaptation on the way. Because why watch a foreign film, even if it’s primarily in English, when you can make a knockoff version that’s almost always lesser than the original?

I can’t speak to the quality of the 2022 Danish film Speak No Evil (I’ve not seen it), but its remake feels like it was lost in translation.

The core of the film remains the same: Two families meet on holiday and hit it off. One invites the other for a weekend at their isolated, rural home. When they arrive, the rapport from the holiday is gone, replaced by an alarming vibe. As the host family’s strange behavior escalates, the question of the film becomes clear: will the visiting couple leave or stick it out? Of course, they should leave, but there wouldn’t be a horror film if they did.

The social dynamics change slightly with the couples changing from Danish and Dutch to English and American, but not enough that the film’s themes should be so thoroughly diluted. Because that’s the issue with the 2024 version of Speak No Evil: it’s all technically well done, but its core is hollow.

The talking points are there. Much of the film is taken up by the horrors of social niceties, which trap the American couple in a snare. Once at the English farm, they are reluctant to leave, not wishing to come off as rude, or worse yet, like rich Americans turning their nose up at English common folk. They already drove a Tesla down the narrow roads their GPS can’t capture. No need for any more faux pas. Then there’s the ripe stench of masculine dominance, with the rugged English husband showing up his sniveling American counterpart at every turn. 

It’s prickly material, or it could be prickly material if anyone involved had the nerve to make it sharp.

For much of the film, the host couple’s behavior is more rude than outright sinister, and since that is a valid reason to leave, the family does, in fact, leave. Several times as the film ramps up the Americans make the correct choice and stand up to their tormentors. Circumstance, mistakes, or simple movie contrivances make them stay to see just how far the host family will take things. What precisely, then, is being critiqued here? Do the Americans deserve what they get? Or is it just a ploy to make you squirm with no point behind it?

Even as the film drones on towards its inevitable conclusion, one thing will keep your interest: James McAvoy. He plays the peacocking British patriarch with such bravado and force that it’s impossible to take your eyes off him. He rewards the attention with subtle displays of dominance, things that almost certainly weren’t in the script, that blow all the other performances out of the water. Not that the rest of the actors are bad. It’s Mackenzie Davis, Scoot McNairy, and Aisling Franciosi, after all, who all have proven themselves better than this lackluster horror film.

Waste. This film is, simply put, a waste. A waste of an intriguing idea, a waste of a good cast, all in service of a film that’s not outright terrible or any good. It hangs in liminal mediocrity, doomed to be forgotten as quickly as the remake was rushed into theaters.

Release: Available now to stream
Director: James Watkins
Writers: James Watkins
Cast: James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis, Scoot McNairy, Aisling Franciosi