Review of the remake of “Speak No Evil”: Unnecessary and not scary

What made Christian Tafdrup's Danish nihilistic horror film “Speak No Evil” — an even more hopeless take on “Funny Games” and its vivisection of bourgeois mores and cruel incitement of audience bloodshed — so shocking was what was left unsaid. Namely, the Nordic social code that says you should never enter a stranger's home, especially if you've been timidly invited, and that the invitation alone should be a blinking red light to avoid mingling your own family vacation with someone else's. Since American studios are almost perversely compelled to do so, “Speak No Evil” is remade here as a safe, scare-free affair, directed by James Watkins, who hails from the Blumhouse factory of mainstream fright movies. Watkins is a reasonable candidate for a remake, if it even needed to happen, given his pedigree as director of the spooky “Eden Lake,” about a romantic weekend terrorized by criminals with no clear motive.

Yet this version of “Speak No Evil,” despite an effectively creepy performance by James McAvoy, grinds the original’s disturbing contours into a gory, “Who’s Laughing?”-esque home-invasion pulp in the final act that’s exactly the kind of drawn-out, predictable material Tafdrup wanted to avoid. Even an adorably insecure Mackenzie Davis, married here to an irresponsible shadow of a man played by Scoot McNairy, and the impressive “The Nightingale” Aisling Franciosi in her first major studio appearance can’t save this “Speak No Evil” from its own urge to appease audiences with a reasonably happy ending that’s a far cry from the stones thrown in the original’s final, harrowingly dispiriting scene.

Genteel London Americans Louise (Davis) and Ben (McNairy) are on a summer holiday in Tuscany with their young daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler). They are shaken by Louise's recent infidelity and by Ben's recent loss of his job, which has emasculated him from the start, in a film that continues this (much like the original). There they meet wacky English West Country holidaymakers Paddy (McAvoy) and Ciara (Franciosi), a couple who enjoy public displays of affection and are also travelling with their child Ant (Dan Hough), and Paddy's brazen dragging of a poolside deckchair introduces a man with a crass relationship with hotel manners. But the couples get on quite well, despite some ominous omens about Paddy and Ciara (including a disgusting joke about Paddy's toilet paper habits to try to stop another family on holiday from sitting at their table), and soon Louise and Ben are invited back to their English country house for another holiday. What could go wrong?

Everything and more, because after a pitch-black, winding drive to Paddy and Ciara's remote, deserted cottage in the working-class neighborhood, Paddy is soon forcing venison into the mouth of devout (but perhaps hypocritical) vegetarian Louise. Watkins, who also wrote the screenplay, lifts such faux pas directly from Tafdrup's film – but leaves out the really creepy stuff, like the original's Paddy, who goes by the name Patrick, jerking off in the guest bathroom while Louise showers. Or the Danish couple in the 2022 film who, whether they know it or not, are so turned on by their hosts' shamelessness that they end up having sex in the guest room while Patrick watches through a cut-out window in the door. All of Tafdrup's quirks are ironed out to make this “Speak No Evil” more palatable, presumably to popcorn-munching moviegoers in the United States.

While there are moments here where you want to scream at the screen and snap Louise and Ben out of their passive stupor as Paddy and Ciara's behavior becomes more and more strange and insidious and Louise and Ben just sit there and take it, both Speak No Evil films are at their sharpest in their examination of how we subjugate ourselves to avoid conflict, degrading our values ​​in the process. Both films strain credibility in terms of how stupid these people can become – including Louise and Ben, who freak out so much that they speed away from the country house in their Tesla, only to speed back to retrieve their daughter's forgotten stuffed animal, thus retreating back into the tomb of hell.

If you've seen the first Speak No Evil, you don't really need to seek this one out. The best horror remakes improve or expand on their source material (see Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria, for example), finding new crumbs under the rug that were previously unexplored or only casually brushed up by the original. Watkins' remake borrows unforgivably directly from the original, but leaves out many of the strong parts, including the horrifying inevitability Tafdrup built up when the hosts turn out to be marauders with a murderous secret.

Even worse, if you have seen the long trailer for this “Speak No Evil” that has been anticipating genre films in theaters all summer, then there is Really This time, he doesn't have to show up. The opening shots even go so far as to reveal the eerie, body-horrifying reality of Ant's medical “condition”: an inability to speak that his parents attribute to an underdeveloped tongue. As predictable as such twists were in the Danish film, Tafdrup has nevertheless left you completely unprepared for his film's heartless and even blackly humorous finale, sending you home with a shudder and a shrug. Although Watkins' film limps toward its own grave in a showy final act, I must at least give it credit for almost entirely foregoing a score in the final 30 minutes, leaving you guessing where things are going. But too bad you already know and it's too late to care.

In the tradition of American remakes, Watkins aims for a somewhat happier ending than Tafdrup, with Louise and Ben confronting their hosts in an overlong scene while simultaneously trying to prevent the deliberate annihilation of their family they've just run into. Davis, the Canadian indie film and TV actress beloved for her role in AMC's “Halt and Catch Fire” and superbly menacing in Sophia Takal's industry psychological thriller “Always Shine,” does her best in a role that's mostly a pawn to move the plot forward.

The same goes for McNairy, a helpless, spineless, sad father who lets his wife handle the situation (and Davis is a real fighter), while Paddy and Ciara develop into full-blown villains. McAvoy's gift for a fixed grin and a cocky machismo that makes you feel good, only to do a 180-degree turn into pure psychopathy, is well-played here. But he's a more cartoonishly evil, toxic man than the often inscrutable enigma conjured by actor Fedja van Huêt in the 2022 film – especially when he's screaming in Ant's face about his poor dancing skills.

Why are Paddy and Ciara doing this? “Because you let us,” they tell Louise and Ben, in a direct quote from Tafdrup's film. But then Paddy keeps talking, explaining the root of his and Ciara's reign of terror while Tafdrup simply stopped, a byproduct here of a script that makes too many excuses and says too much, where Tafdrup has let the horrific events play out without asterisks or handholds into the abyss. Even earlier, McAvoy recites Philip Larkin's “This Be the Verse” — about how they mess you up, your mommy and daddy — in another blunt tirade that speaks volumes about the film's thematic intentions. Blumhouse has inadvertently repeated the argument that these horror remakes shouldn't exist in the first place — rather than saying no evil, “Speak No Evil” ends up just making the case for its own demise. The company is in the process of rebooting “The Blair Witch Project” for Lionsgate. Please, God, make it end.

Grade: C

“Speak No Evil” premieres in US theaters on Friday, September 13th.

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