Speak No Evil Is a Caricature of an Americanized Horror Remake

Speak No Evil is a caricature of what “Americanizing” a movie means. Hollywood looks down on their average audience member, in turn dumbing down and brightening up any of the dour films making their way stateside from Europe or Asia. In a land where the Popcornmeter and CinemaScore reign, the powers that be believe that unhappy endings and unpalatable goings-on are anathema to the box office—even in horror movies. 2022’s Speak No Evil, a film whose claim to fame among Shudder subscribers is its uncompromising promise of a bad time, never stood a chance. Despite a furiously alpha-male James McAvoy raging through the movie—nearly making this new take into an enjoyable, scareless, hoot-and-holler romp—Blumhouse’s hollowed-out remake undermines its nasty source material with its Americanized sheen.

Where the original film was a committed takedown of a particular too-polite affliction apparently pervasive among Danes, writer/director James Watkins’ remake translates those damning social niceties to softly liberal Americans. Ben (Scoot McNairy) and Louise Dalton (Mackenzie Davis) drive a Tesla. Of course they’re easy to bully. Louise is a vegetarian—well, a pescatarian. But she donates to sustainable fishing causes! Ben is cartoonishly emasculated. Their tween daughter, Agnes (Alix West Lefler), anxiously does breathing exercises and clings to a stuffed bunny. This is a family imagined by a podcaster who has recently powered through some damning allegations. It’s a family just asking to be taken advantage of by cool, pushy, extroverted Brits. Enter Paddy (James McAvoy) and Ciara (Aisling Franciosi).

The families meet on vacation, where the easygoing, fun-loving foreigners seduce the Daltons with their carefree aura. They’re not stressed about work, about boozing before noon, about zipping a child around on a Vespa without a helmet. As soon as Paddy does a front flip into the hotel pool, the Daltons were smitten. The couple even has a shy son, Ant (Dan Hough), who Agnes can play with. As sunny Italy fades into rainy gray London, the Daltons, back at home, pine for the fantasy they just left. That unburdening of responsibility is just too tempting. Even if it seems like an overstep, a bit too much too soon, they quickly accept an invitation to spend a long, isolated weekend with their new acquaintances.

We all know this is a terrible mistake, made by a couple trying to avoid being alone with their rocky marriage. McNairy and Davis are so feeble and tepid, you yearn for the handsy, aggro, radically honest douchebaggery of McAvoy and Franciosi’s couple. Every line out of Paddy’s mouth is a Reddit factoid, coated in a layer of toxic masculinity therapyspeak. But McAvoy thrusts the words at you, with an animal grin and that inescapable charm. He’s charisma carpet bombing, the angry energy that will inevitably turn against the Daltons already in plain sight. But Speak No Evil is about ignoring enough red flags to supply the Olympic opening ceremony. Passivity means death.

Like in the original film, which Watkins mimics with relative fidelity for the first two acts, Speak No Evil’s script punishes going along to get along. It also includes countless, groan-inducing contrivances to force its too-nice heroes back into the clearly gaping maw of hell. At least this element will play well with American audiences; someone yelling “don’t do that!” at idiot horror protagonists comes standard in every theater.

But it’s what awaits these thinly drawn protagonists that pushes Speak No Evil away from the selling point of its source and into the textbook definition of a watered-down, defanged English language remake. Watkins, best known perhaps for his underwhelming Woman in Black adaptation, films the escalating faux pas with an eye for his actors over the push-pull nerviness of the genre. McAvoy shoulders much of this work, hamming it up as smiles turn to snarls and boyish roughhousing turns abusive. But this telegraphed tension gives way to a ridiculous, action-packed finale that discards the thematic throughline of the film in favor of anonymity. You can imagine a suit watching the original and saying “Ugh, so bleak—and so few explosions!” Both tedious issues are solved in Watkins’ version.

Though McAvoy is going M. Night Shyamalan beast mode in Speak No Evil, the horror’s ideas—retrograde as they may be—fizzle away as soon as its 97-pound weaklings suddenly become badasses. A few outrageous, silly camera moves and wild-eyed faces from Davis try to sell this late tonal pivot, but it’s all so inexplicably tame for its R rating that you can’t even buy into the (let’s just say it, cowardly) changes. Neither a dauntingly dark examination of social niceties nor an exciting family-focused survival thriller, Speak No Evil fumbles its adaptation so predictably it’s like it was written into the playbook. More evil could be spoken about this one, but perhaps it’s appropriate to hold my tongue.

Director: James Watkins
Writer: James Watkins
Starring: James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis, Aisling Franciosi, Alix West Lefler, Dan Hough, Scoot McNairy
Release Date: September 13, 2024

Jacob Oller is Movies Editor at Paste Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter at @jacoboller.

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