Speak No Evil

The Plot: Ben (Scoot McNairy) and Louise (Mackenzie Davis) are having a normal family holiday in Italy. They encounter Paddy (James McAvoy) and Ciara (Aisling Franciosi), a couple with a very different idea of parenting. Paddy invites them to join his family in his countryside retreat back home in England. An innocuous enough invitation from near-strangers, but Ben and Louise go along anyway and find that their daughter has a potential friend in the speech-impaired Ant (Dan Hough). The social niceties are gradually stripped away though when Paddy and Ciara start crossing parental boundaries once more and more aggressively too…

The Verdict: Ahh… strangers. If they’re not wearing masks and trying to spook you out at the front door, they could also be hiding malicious intent behind a seemingly friendly invitation and a glass of wine over dinner. As the saying often goes, you just don’t know people. At least in the movie world anyway, where characters aren’t quite what they seem and might be a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Maybe even the picnic is doomed to begin with. That’s where we find ourselves in Speak No Evil, an English-language remake of a relatively recent Danish film of the same name. The cat is out of the bag on this one, given that the trailer has already revealed a good bit about the plot of this psychological thriller with horror overtones. Whatever happened to holding back a bit and just suggesting that something is off about a character? That’s all it takes to hook an audience’s interest, but trailers that reveal too much are fairly standard anyway (let’s not use the last shot of the film in the trailer either – see Dune: Part Two).

Thankfully, there are still plenty of surprises left at the heart of this nervous comedy of manners that gradually descends into a darker place and does so with a measured sense of pacing. Writer-director James Watkins has adapted Christian and Mads Tafdrup’s script into the pleasantness of the English countryside, with a brief nod towards its origins by referencing an unwanted Danish couple early on. Ben and Louise are something of a vanilla couple, going through their own marriage crisis and keeping the chin up regardless. Paddy and Ciara are less uptight and more uninhibited, offering parenting advice that doesn’t go down well and crossing boundaries without much consideration. They also have a habit of winding up their guests at every opportunity, leaving Ben and Louise unsure whether they mean it or not. Watkins has previous form in this kind of uneasy social situation, having written and directed the memorable, equally fraught stranger danger film Eden Lake.

Speak No Evil is more of a slow-burner though, but in a good way. It earns the audience investment early on by filling out the characters and their predicaments, then gradually breaks down those social barriers to the point where the good manners have to be set aside if anything is to be resolved. Watkins turns the screws slowly but with each turn more pressure is applied on Ben and Louise. If anything, the American couple appear to have the stiff upper lip here while the British couple are more brash and unfiltered. The audience is just waiting for that moment when it will all blow up. This is the make-it or break-it moment when the film really comes into its own, but it could easily falter here. Fortunately, Watkins shows a great command of his actors and fine tunes their performances so that what unfolds is credibly in character and suitably nerve-shredding. James McAvoy in particular is a storming physical presence in this film. He has a mischievous glint in his eye when holding a dangerous-looking power tool or savagely berating his son in front of the others.

Watkins maintains that early momentum later on and then pays it off with a barnstorming third act – a sort-of reverse Straw Dogs in which the owners of the house are on the outside trying to get in. The film ultimately works well because it doesn’t hold back on its characters or make apologies for them. There’s no patronising moralising either. Watkins simply winds up his characters and lets the actors loose to have fun with them, while delivering the necessary action and suspense that comes with a film like this. That he does so without slipping up the pacing and characterisation, along with the ending, is a credit to him, his game cast and production team. Remakes can often be dismissed as pointless, but for once this one has a definite, validated purpose and is all the more enjoyable for it.

Rating: 4 / 5

Review by Gareth O’Connor