Speak No Evil <img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/>

Speak No Evil

Speak No Evil is a remake of a Danish psychological thriller of the same name (or Gæsterne in Danish) from 2022. James Watkins directed and adapted the script from Christian and Mads Tafdrup's earlier film and tweaked just enough to plop it in the same bucket as The Vanishing (U.S. remake). Seeing this version on its own merits is fine but I'm guessing if you've seen the original (I haven't), you may feel slightly deflated or energised, depending on your sensibilities. For the record, I had a blast with this. It's a clever genre film that satirises societal norms and avoidance of conflict and all participants are bang on it.

The story runs that a regular American couple with a young daughter meet an English couple with a son on holiday in Italy. They get on well and promise to catch up when they get back to England. The Americans are having some domestic problems and see an invitation to Devon to visit the holiday couple as a good chance to recharge. Mackenzie Davis and Scoot McNairy play the circumspect Louise and Ben, James McAvoy and Aisling Franciosi are more 'loose' as Paddy and Ciara. The kids Agnes and Ant (Alix West Lefler and Dan Hough) hold their own in this stellar company.

The script is tight and very funny too. McAvoy is superb as the unhinged Paddy, all bristling machismo but uber friendly, like that pisshead who won't let anyone else buy drinks at the bar. The passive-aggressive parenting disagreements are uncomfortably fantastic and he does great face-work - the multiple characters he played in Split and Glass come in handy here. Davis is equally fine, her uncomprehending eyes say a lot - she mirrors our incredulity at the creeping dread throughout. Franciosi is unsettling (which way will she go when the chips are down?) and McNairy swings between wishy and washy until the climax.

Some of the lines pay off later - for example, at a drunken dinner, Ciara says her and Paddy have been together for 17 years and Louise wonders how old Ciara must have been when they met. The subsequent realisation is truly awful. Incidentally, this weird restaurant scene seems pivotal now to the whole plot - it's here we meet the only other character since the Italian holiday, Mike (Kris Hitchen), and Paddy delivers the Philip Larkin poem, This Be the Verse. It's spine-tingling. There's also a very eye-opening role play that threatens to go too far, and a throw-away moment of comedy as they settle the bill. An excellent sequence.

Look, there are things in this that make absolutely no sense: Did he not notice the keys were gone? Did they have to go back for the bunny? Do Teslas have bulletproof windshields? and more, but the positives vastly outweigh the negatives, even the ending was kind of right for this iteration.

Any film that can boast a Larkin poem AND McAvoy singing Eternal Flame in the most awkwardly sincere way possible gets pretty high marks in my book. Speak No Evil is always tense, often implausible, but never dull.

It opens around the country on Sep 12th - in Perth at the multiplexes, as well as Luna and Palace cinemas.

See also:

This is another Blumhouse production and their most profitable so far is Jordan Peele's Get Out (2017). Another from that stable is Damien Chazelle's Whiplash (2014). Both are brilliant.

(Film stills and trailer ©Universal, 2024)

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