Weekend Watch: Speak No Evil
Beware vacation friends offering invites
Image Credit: Universal Pictures
Welcome to the latest edition of Weekend Watch, where I recommend (or occasionally warn against) movies or TV shows I’ve been checking out. This week, James McAvoy is the host from hell. Follow James on Twitter:@jamwhite and Threads/Instagram: @jammerwhite
Whenever a remake is announced, there is collective uproar on social media decrying an imaginative and creative bankruptcy in filmmaking. But what if you took a compelling thriller –– in this case, director Christian Tafdrup’s creepy, pitch-dark 2022 satire of differing behaviour between a Danish and a Dutch couple Speak No Evil (co-written with brother Mads) and injected your own instincts into it.
That’s exactly what Eden Lake and The Woman In Black director James Watkins has done, with the backing of Team Blumhouse.
The setup is similar to the original with just a few tweaks: Americans Ben (Scott McNairy) and Louise Dalton (Mackenzie Davis) are vacationing in Italy with daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler). It’s there they meet charming yet occasionally overbearing doctor Paddy (James McAvoy), travelling with wife Ciara (Aisling Franciosi) and their quiet, reserved son Ant (Dan Hough). The couples become holiday friends, and when Ben and Louise return to London –– where Ben moved the family from the States for work, only for his position to be eliminated –– they’re quickly invited by Paddy to come and spend a relaxing weekend at his family’s farmhouse.
Yet when Ben, Louise and Agnes show up, they quickly realise that Paddy’s boorish behaviour on holiday was just the tip of the iceberg. He’s a tornado of toxic masculinity and there is something very strange about both his family dynamic and their house. The Americans try to find excuses to leave, but things very quickly turn dangerous.
That’s a very simplistic overview of what is a knotty, thrilling film that offers plenty of pleasures, not the least of which is McAvoy fully embracing the darkness and danger of his character, while letting his natural charisma work as a convincing mask for Paddy.
He’s the definite highlight, but all the performances are well calculated here; McNairy is the perfect foil for McAvoy, playing a much meeker man who nonetheless finds strength when he really needs to. And Davis might have the most complex character of all, a compelling blend of protective mother figure and conflicted wife. The kids, too have their moments to shine.
Watkins as writer/director has some different themes on his mind from the original, and he certainly justifies taking a second crack at the idea of mismatched mores. While the final act doesn’t ever match up to the blistering, politics-tinged wrap of the 2022 effort, his attempts to drum up thrills (and some dark laughs) work.
Speak No Evil is in UK and US cinemas now.