Producers: Jason Blum and Paul Ritchie Director: James Watkins Screenplay: James Watkins Cast: James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis, Scoot McNairy, Aisling Franciosi, Alix West Lefler, Dan Hough, Kris Hitchen and Motaz Malhees Distributor: Universal
Grade: B-
There have been a host of internet complaints about the trailer for James Watkins’ film, emphasizing how it gives away the entire plot. As it happens, the criticism is fair. In the trailer’s defense, though, the plot is so thin that it would have been well-nigh impossible to craft an ordinary trailer without revealing an awful lot of it. And of course nowadays the sort of creative ambiguity that was once a staple in imaginative trailers is a thing of the past.
Add to that the fact that “Speak No Evil” is a remake of Christian Tafdrup’s 2022 thriller of the same name. The earlier film might not have been seen by a huge number of people, but the vast majority of those who have seen it are admirers, often fanatically so.
They’re likely to be disappointed in this reimagining, which follows Tafdrup fairly closely for the first two acts but then shifts radically in the third, opting for something much more predictable and less disturbing, the inspiration pretty obviously being Sam Peckinpah’s 1971 “Straw Dogs.” That picture drew ferocious denunciations of its violence at the time, but of course standards have changed, and though today’s more jaded audiences will find the overly protracted finale Watkins settled on sufficiently satisfying, it certainly doesn’t possess the gut-wrenching impact of the one Tafdrup and his wife Mads, who co-wrote the earlier script, contrived: its utter bleakness would never have passed muster with American mainstream viewers anyway.
And despite the surgery, Watkins’ “Speak No Evil” doesn’t trash its predecessor to the extent that George Sluizer’s 1993 remake of his own 1988 “The Vanishing” did. It does, however, lose most of the bitingly satirical class-conscious subtext of Tafdrup’s original, as well as the nihilistic shock of its close.
The movie begins with Louise and Ben Dalton (Mackenzie Davis and Scott McNairy) on vacation in Tuscany with their eleven-year old daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler)—a Croatian location standing in quite convincingly for the Italian one. They meet an English couple, Paddy and Ciara (James McAvoy and Aisling Franciosi) who are there with their mute young son Ant (Dan Hough), and the gregarious Paddy has soon won them over despite his occasional overripe volatility. When the Daltons have returned to London, where they’d relocated from America for Ben’s job (from which he’s now been downsized), they receive a postcard from Paddy inviting them to visit them in the beautiful West Country, where he and Ciara have an isolated farm. Though they have some misgivings, the trip would provide a welcome change, since their domestic situation has become a mite fraught due to Ben’s joblessness and Louise’s discontent, and so they make the long drive into Gloucestershire’s dense forest.
Initially things go reasonably well, though Paddy can be pushy and manipulative, and his parenting style can raise eyebrows. But the situation quickly deteriorates as the hosts’ behavior grows increasingly bizarre and Ant struggles to reveal some dark secrets to Agnes, who shares his dismal bedroom. When the Daltons try to leave, Paddy makes it difficult to get away, and ultimately the situation requires milquetoast Ben to man up and work with spunky Louise to save themselves and the children from Paddy, Ciara and their confederate Mike (Kris Hitchen), at whose little restaurant the two couples had had a tense dinner.
The movie’s dominated by McAvoy, who obviously relishes playing a gaudy villain. He manages to ratchet up Paddy’s creepiness quotient from mild to astronomical as the plot cruises on, but in the end the character is confusing. On the one hand, he’s bonkers (why else would he keep a virtual treasury of souvenirs of his crimes?), but on the other he’s mercenary, his craziness serving his bankroll; he’s portrayed as both wacko and calculating. (It’s very different from the murders committed by Norman Bates, which Simon Oakland’s psychologist described as deeds of “passion, not profit.”) The same observation is true of Franciosi’s Ciara, but she resides in Paddy’s shadow, so while the actress has some arresting moments, she never dominates as McAvoy does.
As for the Daltons, they’re a pretty dim pair, decidedly slow on the uptake. Louise at least perceives that something’s off early on, and Davis registers her growing discomfort well; she’s also the stronger of the two, with McNairy’s Ben letting himself be bullied about by Paddy until during the showdown she has to force him out of his wimpy fear to take a stand. But the actor manages the turn to Ben’s heroic side decently enough, even though the script’s piling up of climax after climax invites chuckles rather than gasps
As to the youngsters, both Lefler and Hough are excellent, though the screenplay relies so much on Agnes’ attachment to her stuffed rabbit Hoppy as the means of redirecting the action at important points that it becomes a rather ridiculous narrative crutch.
Watkins and cinematographer Tim Maurice-Jones use the locations—both Croatian and English—to good effect, as does production designer James Price, while editor John Harris is a mite too ready to let the pace slacken, particularly to give McAvoy the opportunity to do some more scenery-chewing; the final confrontation goes on too long, and cutting between different elements of it muddies detail and blunts the buildup of tension. Still, the close will provide most viewers with the expected satisfaction of seeing the villains get their just deserts, though they may be as shocked as the Daltons by a final act of gruesome violence. The score by Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans is serviceable.
You might say that Watkins has domesticated Tafdrup’s scathing original for popular consumption, but on its own more conventional terms, his remake is unsettling enough to score with genre devotees. And McAvoy certainly has a field day.