James McAvoy as Paddy and Aisling Franciosi as Ciara in a scene from Speak No Evil.Universal Pictures and Blumhouse/Universal Pictures
Speak No Evil
Directed by James Watkins
Written by Christian Tafdrup, Mads Tafdrup and James Watkins
Starring James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis and Scoot McNairy
Classification 14A; 110 minutes
Opens in theatres Sept. 13
Adapting European fare for Hollywood audiences is a task that often seems to leave critics wanting. Between the easy narrative digestibility it’s assumed we require and the belief that North American moviegoers refuse to engage with any film with even a hint of a subtitle, English-language remakes of critically successful European films often live in the artistic shadows of their source material.
With Christian Tafdrup’s chilling 2022 thriller Speak No Evil, the Danish filmmaker made viewers anxiously squirm in their seats with a Michael-Haneke-knockoff style of nihilism that left them in a state of empty anguish as the final credits rolled. The 2024 remake, directed by Bastille Day and The Woman in Black filmmaker James Watkins, takes a much different approach to its horrors.
Tafdrup’s Danish family visiting a Dutch family they met on holiday are re-envisioned here as an American family visiting an English family they have become acquainted with in much the same way. Following the original film almost beat by beat, we are introduced to the Daltons – mother Louise, father Ben and daughter Agnes – as they travel to a modest yet sprawling home in the idyllic English countryside to stay with Ciara and Paddy and their functionally mute son Ant.
Hesitant but also excited for the change of routine, the Daltons are quickly made to feel uneasy by their hosts. Ciara and Paddy seem to delight in toying with the family while feigning innocence in doing so; they continually cross the Daltons’ boundaries in all manner of things, from meal times to child care to simply sharing the space of the home.
From the left: Alix West Lefler as Agnes Dalton, Scoot McNairy as Ben Dalton and Mackenzie Davis as Louise Dalton in a scene from Speak No Evil.Susie Allnutt/Universal Pictures and Blumhouse/Universal Pictures
Much like the original film, the two families are engaged in an anxious choreography of manners, both performed and very much real. And while Tafdrup’s Speak No Evil certainly relied much more on the nervous maintenance of propriety (which only heightened the tension of the film), Watkins’s rendition is more willing to let us see the sinister nature of its characters much earlier on, with James McAvoy’s performance as an ever-abrasive and tempestuous Paddy stealing nearly every scene.
In that sense, what some could argue is a lack of subtlety also means 2024′s Speak No Evil occupies a more conventional space of genre filmmaking. The villains here delight in transparently playing with their chosen victims even before their own true natures are revealed. It’s a change of tone that reorients the feeling of the film away from shaky uncertainty (think Karyn Kusama’s delightfully antsy 2015 thriller, The Invitation) and toward a much more certain anticipation of what is to come – it’s not if these murderous machinations will emerge, but when.
Where the horror of 2022′s Speak No Evil feels deeply, almost inescapably cruel in its final moments, Watkins’s film takes a relatively conventional approach, relying more on slasher tropes than producing a deep-seated sense of unease.
While the films certainly echo each other in terms of visual style and pacing, it’s this stark difference that will offend fans of the original film. But it may also offer those who couldn’t bear Tafdrup’s narrative callousness a much easier way to engage with the film’s thrills. Where the original film utilized spectacle as a means of exploring an entirely wicked philosophy, Watkins engages spectacle as spectacle, leaving audiences cheering along rather than utterly despondent.