Speak No Evil
In today’s context, “Speak No Evil” is a throw to the times of “The Hand that Rocks the Cradle”, “Unlawful Entry,” and “Fatal Attraction”. It represents the discontinuation of family dominated thrillers of urban heyday crafted in the 80s and 90s where good and bad were general social constructs, which culminated in sending up the representatives of an outwardly respectable bourgeoise and their savagery.
Written and directed by James Watkins who also directed ‘The Woman in Black’ with similar brutal and straight to the point Danish original, it is a good movie for a viewer as floor boxes within a packed theater and are substitutes of proper interpersonal boundaries which should not be crossed. It’s one of those movies where it’s reasonable, and expected, to scream at the screen: “What are you doing in there, you moron?” The movie will definitely be of interest to some therapists as well who advise their patients about inner voices, where some of them should advise their patients more of their inner voices as it can go a long way. There’s plenty of opportunities for education here, including numerous topics related to improvised devices: weapons or otherwise.
The main characters come from America, and they’ve moved to London for both business and personal reasons, but things haven’t been good for them. Husband Ben Dalton (Scoot McNairy), wife Louise Dalton (Mackenzie Davis), and daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler) are also emotionally scarred by an emotional betrayal which will become clear in the conclusion when the in-laws bring them to a narrow hallway with sharp corners.
That would be the unanticipated and suggestive entrance of another family, which is made up of a father and a physician nearing his fortieth called Paddy (James McAvoy), his younger Eastern European wife Ciara (Aisling Franciosi), and their son Ant (Dan Hough) who is about the age of Agnes but is not clearly heard since he has been born with a defect in the tongue which Paddy describes as a birth deformity of the tongue. The families meet each other in an Italian vacation and manage to get along enough for Paddy to offer the Daltons a chance to spend some time at his old but rather large and somewhat neglected farmhouse located in the rural area a few hours from London.
I hear they are going to hang out more, share homecooked meals, swim in the local pond, take walks in the woods, and plenty more other things that sound like a great time until you realize that the people hosting them suffer from severe insanity, which is quicker than you would think.
It is precisely here that the audience’s patience with pointless antics starts to dwindle and does so with shouts and cheers. There are plenty of moments in the film where one of the Daltons would want to witness some variety of unacceptable social behavior or the other, be it Paddy telling apparently vegetarian Louise to try some slow roasted goose or Ciara, at a dinner table, pretend to perform oral sex on him for effect, pause and then say “My, my, what a surprise, it is already this hour!” and run away as far as she could from these people. If it’s your idea of fun, part of the fun here is watching the Daltons, or should I say the self failureists, who go out of their way to put themselves in the very situations they swore they would never want to be a part of, to begin with.
As already stated, ‘Speak No Evil‘ is based on the 2020 Danish film by Christian and Mads Tafdrup. Not too many people saw it, but if you did, you may be understandably furious about what has been done to it. The end product is akin to those tell all biographies (most often associated with the making of ‘80s and ‘90s thrillers’ which is interesting) whereby a filmmaker potentially has resolved a plot in an ingenious manner, albeit a disturbing or even ghastly ending yet his test audience demands for the plot of violent consequence and so an alternate resolution is filmed and the film proceeds to gross millions and all people go home believing what they did was the right thing because they were off with fat bank accounts. Fans of foreign language indie films will even feel the Sanderson storyline in the film like in the original and the remake of Speak No Evil over three decades ago when the cruel beauty of remaking now dubbed as a fade ending ‘The Vanishing’ or ‘Spoorloos’ was the one directed by a Dutch filmmakers which was later on overwriting American market.
The original ‘Speak No Evil’ on the other hand earned critical acclaim which it rightly did, but the film was only able to recoup one third of the total budget spent in production which may be due to fact that this film has one of those types of endings which satisfied the plot but left you depressed and wanting to just get into bed for the next two days.
Watkin’s won’t sway much from the original as in the rest of the film he has ended in a totally different and longer way, allowing the Daltons to somehow resolve the main family issues that pushed them to the brink of separating while looking for more resources from their eight armed federation style of Janitors and other poor weapons like hammers.
The pattern in these kinds of thrillers is that only a handful of people are left grappling for survival in a secluded house. “Speak No Evil” does that cliche well but liberally. Yes, here too one can appreciate this as audience picture too. I found a lot to laugh about (and sometimes with) the film, especially during the moments when Watkins was refashioning this summer in England thriller into a twisted version of ‘Straw Dogs.’ The viewer may get the feeling that she holds the whole documentary section in abeyance while wanting to motion to turn into action because the Davis’s very physical presence kicks into overdrive in this part. She and McNairy exchanged those magic looks that every loving couple has, and it is easy to imagine a whole hour’s worth of marriage counseling just from the gazes.
The performances are all great, almost flawless. To their advantage, three of the four leads (McAvoy, McNairy, and Davis) have performed similar roles before, or at the very least characters who had similar functions to the plot; you know straight away that you’re in good hands and these actors are going to deliver in a scene where you figured it could only swing one way.
McAvoy especially stands out as a highly effective performer. He has gradually but steadily become a sort of film star over the decades, and here, he brings his malevolently refined charm with him and at times, it might be warm cans of memories where you watched Russell Crowe in one of his early performances and no one was ever sure if that was a no nonsense bloke who had a rough outer shell and genuinely good at his core, or a beast. Paddy is each of these.
The warmth he so openly demonstrates together with his insecurities and exaggerated show of love towards his wife and child is perceived as absolutely genuine. However subtext is introduced that makes any impression that the film is seeking to justify or romanticise him impossible. It understands that some of the most vile human beings ever have loved their mommies or at least say that they did. McNairy, Davis and to an extent Franciosi who plays a rather subsidiary role in the movie support and counterbalance Mcavoy’s dynamic performance.
Matthew Leutwyler’s film depicts the Daltons as an abusive relationship where the couple constantly transitions between storming out of the doorway and charging into the drafty old place convinced they are acting for the greater good. The narrative structure is subjected to the cyclical frame in terms of time which segments the plot. I’m not sure that is sufficient to convince people who are already hysterical that these people had endless chances to escape from there and simply disregarded them; I must say, me it did not really work in that way. But then, it is deliberate in my opinion. And a point worth remembering when debating the strengths and weaknesses of the picture.
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