‘Speak No Evil’ Review: James McAvoy Stars as a Sexy Villain in Remake That’ll Make You Scream

If you thought the streaming era finally helped people get over their fear of the one-inch barrier of subtitles, Hollywood hasn’t received the same memo. True, most of these still get trapped in development hell – don’t expect Chris Rock’s reimagining of Another Round to materialize anytime soon – but there are still armies of producers regularly attempting to translate culturally specific stories into global hits. Christian Tafdrup’s divisive 2022 Sundance sensation Speak No Evil is a textbook example of a story that should get lost in translation, a bone-dry satire of Danish social awkwardness with a finale so devoid of catharsis that any faithful adaptation would guarantee an F CinemaScore rating.  

It was unavoidable that any American remake would have to make significant tweaks to such a memorably traumatic third act; you’d be forgiven for bracing yourself for a cinematic travesty on the level of 1993’s The Vanishing, the most egregious example of a Euro-chiller gaining a compromised happy ending in translation. Thankfully, the masterstroke of Blumhouse’s English-language remake of Speak No Evil is recruiting James Watkins behind the camera, effectively transforming this tale into a companion piece with his similarly bleak and bloody 2008 debut Eden Lake, another gruesome account of a middle-class couple’s miserable holiday. Both films generate unease from imbalanced class and cultural dynamics long before the bloodshed begins, with the characters unable to recognize the obvious terror in front of them because they’ve been distracted by having to confront their own unspoken prejudices. Eden Lake even had an abrupt, bruising ending as devastating as the original Speak No Evil, designed to make audiences remain in a shocked silence long after they’ve left the theater. It’s a perfect fit in tone for Watkins, but his remake instead takes a left turn into more conventional home invasion thriller territory by its close. I can’t pretend I didn’t find it thrilling, but for all the excitement it offers, it doesn’t land with the same blunt impact as the original. 

This time around, the Danish-Dutch cultural divide has been replaced by a more familiar American-English one, with expat couple Louise and Ben (Mackenzie Davis and Scoot McNairy) forging an unlikely friendship with the charismatic Paddy (James McAvoy) and his wife Ciara (Aisling Franciosi) on holiday. Weeks after they arrive back home, Paddy has invited them to make the trip from London to stay in their West Country home alongside their tween daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler), who they seem eager to make friends with their quiet son Ant (Dan Hough). You don’t need to have seen the original – or, more likely, the three-minute trailer that gives the game away – to know that they aren’t at all what they seem. 

The one area where Speak No Evil improves upon its Scandinavian predecessor is the characterization of its central antagonist. In the original movie, the one aspect that didn’t ring true is why any unsuspecting families would be drawn into his orbit; here, the casting of James McAvoy – relishing the chance to go big as a cartoonishly toxic dad – ensures that nobody can regard that as a plot hole. Here, Paddy is set up as a more deliberate foil for Ben, a more confrontational personality whose happy marriage stands in stark contrast to his own. The introduction of marital issues to the plot, one of the key threads which pushes this far beyond the 90-minute runtime of the original, recontextualizes the third act as a battle between two men with starkly different definitions of family responsibility. If this sounds like it’s an easy lay-up for a redemptive tale that stands in stark contrast to the depressing finality of the original story, then rest assured that it isn’t. Without spoiling anything, Watkins refuses to offer clear-cut catharsis, finding a way to fool the audience into feeling relief without realizing the rug has been pulled from under them; this is still a tale of cyclical violence, and even this comparatively happier resolution can only offer a brief reprieve from an inherent darkness that will continue to linger for these characters.

It’s an impressive ending in its own right, but when placed next to the straightforward, uncomplicated horrors of the original, it’s far less memorable. As the majority of audiences watching this remake won’t have a Shudder subscription enabling them to catch up with that, this is hardly an issue. But for those who have, the many exhilarating highs of this remake will quickly die down in memory as the gut-wrenching spiritual lows of the original will continue to be impossible to shake off, all these years later. 

Rating: B-

Universal Pictures will release Speak No Evil in theaters on September 13.

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Alistair Ryder

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