Speak No Evil (2024), Horror Movie Review

Speak No Evil (2024), Horror Movie Review

Speak No Evil (2024), A Horror Movie Review by Hope Madden

A dream holiday turns into a living nightmare when an American couple and their daughter spend the weekend at a British family’s idyllic country estate.

Release date: 12 September 2024 (UK)

Director: James Watkins

Speak No Evil (2024), A Horror Movie Review by Hope Madden
Speak No Evil (2024)

Speak No Evil (2024), A Horror Movie Review by Hope Madden

Speak No Evil (2024) is in a tough spot. Essentially, you’re either a moviegoer who will breathe easier this weekend knowing you’ll never again have to sit through the excruciating trailer, you’re a potentially interested horror fan, or you’re a horror fanatic wary that director James Watkins will pull punches landed by Christian Tafdrup’s  almost unwatchably grim but genuinely terrifying 2022 original.

Well, Watkins does not pull those punches, but they do land differently.

Louise and Ben Dalton (Mackenzie Davis and Scoot McNairy) are vacationing blandly in Italy with their 11-year-old, Agnes (Alix West Lefler) when a louder, more alive family catches Ben’s attention.

Paddy (James McAvoy) and Ciara (Aisling Franciosi) and their quiet lad Ant (Dan Hough) seem to be living life large, and Ben can’t help but envy that. So, after the Daltons are tucked blandly back into their London flat and he receives a postcard from their vacation pals inviting them out to the countryside, how can he say no?

We all know he should have said no, but that’s not how horror movies happen.

What follows is a horror of manners, and very few genres are more agonizing than that. Little by little by little, alone and very far from civilization, the Daltons’ polite respectability is jostled and clawed and eventually, of course, gutted.

Those familiar with Watkins’s work, especially his remarkable and remarkably unpleasant Eden Lake, needn’t worry that he’ll let you off the hook.

This is not the sanitized English language version fans of the original feared.

Indeed, Watkins and a game cast highlighted by a feral McAvoy stick to Tafdrup’s script for better than half of the film. Watkins, who adapted the original script, complicates relationships and gives the visiting Dalton parents more backbone, but he doesn’t neuter the grim story being told. Instead, he ratches up tension, provides a more coherent backstory, and pulls out the big guns in Act 3.

Speak No Evil (2024), A Horror Movie Review by Hope Madden
Speak No Evil (2024)

If you’ve seen the original, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed by the direction the remake takes. Though it can feel like a correction aimed at pleasing a wider audience, it also makes for a more satisfying film.

Fanciosi is carving out a career of wonderfully nuanced genre performances (NightingaleStopmotion). We learned in 2017 with Split that McAvoy can do anything. Anything at all. He proves that here with a ferocious turn, evoking vulnerability and contempt sometimes in the same moment. It’s a compelling beast he creates, and no wonder weary travelers fall under his spell.

Watkins doesn’t make enough movies. For his latest he’s chosen a project with the narrowest chance of success. But here’s hoping he finds it.

Author

  • Hope Madden

    ope Madden, a graduate of The Ohio State University, is an author and filmmaker.In addition to 12 years at the independent weekly newspaper The Other Paper, Hope has written for Columbus Monthly Magazine, The Ohio State University Alumni Magazine, and is a published poet. Her first novel, Roost, is out now, as is the anthology Incubate, which includes her short story “Aggrieved.” She recently wrote and directed Obstacle Corpse, the first feature film from MaddWolf Productions! She also writes for Columbus Underground and the UK Film Review.In Central Ohio, you can catch Hope on TV every Friday morning on ABC6/Fox28’s Good Day Columbus.

    View all posts