Film Review - Speak No Evil
Hollywood pointlessly remakes and declaws another European gem, but James McAvoy's muscular performance provides a modicum of compensation
Speak No Evil, a 2022 Danish horror film from director Christian Tafdrup, was released directly to streaming in the UK. Extremely irritating for an old-school, cinema-first, stick-in-the-mud like yours truly, and doubly annoying, as it turned out to be a rather outstanding piece of work. The finale in particular proved splendidly disturbing, as well as metaphorically provocative in a way that many viewers seem to have missed (judging by a lot of reactions from viewers on IMDB). I don’t normally concern myself with such opinions, but they are relevant in this case, as you will see in a moment.
Fast forward a couple of years and we have the inevitable Hollywood remake, with a proper cinema release this time. I must confess I feel deeply irked that this pointless rehash will likely prove the first experience most viewers have with what was once a potent, thought-provoking, dangerous story. No one who has seen the original will ever forget that ending, even if they hated it or missed the point (see the aforementioned IMDB reviews, or rather don’t, if you wish to remain unspoiled). But I doubt anyone will view the finale of this version as anything other than conventional.
The plot begins with an American couple, Ben (Scoot McNairy) and Louise (Mackenzie Davis), and their adolescent daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler), on holiday in Italy. Here they cross paths with a British couple, Paddy (James McAvoy) and Ciara (Aisling Franciosi), and their mute son Ant (Dan Hough). They spend some time together, and Paddy invites the London-based Americans to spend a weekend on their farm in the West Country. But, once they arrive, a catalogue of misunderstandings and microaggressions, either witnessed or experienced, put Ben and Louise on edge. Perhaps Paddy and Ciara aren’t as harmless as they first appeared.
This take on Speak No Evil isn’t quite as superfluous as, say, George Sluizer’s 1993 waste-of-celluloid English language rehash of his 1988 masterpiece The Vanishing (which also undid the original’s monumentally disturbing ending). James McAvoy’s arresting, muscular central performance ensures that much. Also, in all fairness, this isn’t a badly made film, as director James Watkins is a solid pair of hands, perhaps best known for his work adapting The Woman in Black (2012) and for the outstandingly nasty Eden Lake (2008). But I still left the cinema scratching my head, wondering why anyone thought there was a good artistic reason for this remake.
One problem is the Danish version satirised cultural issues between the Danish and Dutch, as well as commenting on certain European liberal attitudes. To my mind (and without getting into spoilers), the ending of the original is a specific, provocative metaphor concerning fears around immigrants in Europe. Judging by the IMDB comments, many viewers, especially Americans, missed the point of the metaphor and couldn’t understand the passive actions of certain characters.
All this subtext is absent from the new version because the metaphors do not work when you switch Holland and Denmark with the UK and America. I daresay that’s one reason studio bosses decided to change the ending. The other is more cynical; a tale of liberal-minded folk who learn the hard way not to let others walk all over them, fighting back in a final act more akin to Straw Dogs (1972), is a far less bitter pill for Americans to swallow, right?
Personally, I don’t agree. It is easy to stereotype American audiences in this way and assume they must always have things dumbed down. But I don’t buy that, and I never will. Despite the IMBD comments I’ve cited, almost all the Americans I know are thoughtful, erudite, witty people who are more than happy to grapple with difficult subject matter in films of this kind. It’s high time Hollywood studios stopped pandering with these sorts of remakes and started attributing a modicum of intelligence to their viewers. Better still, perhaps they should consider whether a film should be remade at all. Even a poor excuse like subtitle phobia could hardly have been a concern in this case, since the original is largely in English (the Dutch and Danish characters don’t speak one another’s language, so they mostly speak the language they both know instead).
Remakes are not always necessarily bad (a point I make extensively here). Even Hollywood remakes of European films can sometimes prove better or at least a lot more fun than the originals; True Lies (1994) being a case in point. But here, there’s precious little to distinguish the original from the remake. The plot is virtually identical (though a key scene features an argument instead of sex), until the finale, and all the political subtext is gone.
Instead, with this take on Speak No Evil, we get some mildly amusing but hardly incisive commentary on the differences between British and American humour, and the misunderstandings that can ensue. There is also a universally applicable theme of not wanting to appear rude to one’s hosts when one is a guest, even when there’s a creeping horror of behaviour getting weird or inappropriate. Then we get a clichéd, by-the-numbers, crowd-pleasing, Hollywood-style finale, which works well enough, but isn’t likely to deeply scar any viewers the way the original did. The sole significant redeeming feature is James McAvoy, who proves a tremendously menacing presence throughout.
In short, this is a slickly made but declawed take on the Danish version. I’d advise sticking with the original, where the psychological suspense builds more potently, with greater ambiguity as to whether the guests are more at fault than their hosts, until the film reveals its hand in its devastating ending. I won’t ever forget Speak No Evil, but I doubt the remake will haunt me in anything like the same way.
(Originally published at Medium.)
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Once again, Hollywood proves Europe does some kind of movies better....
I loved James McAvoy’s performance. I never saw the original but this one definitely kept me on the edge of my seat.