Is it justification enough for Speak No Evil to remake a 2022 Danish horror purely for the spectacle of a beefed-up, foaming-at-the-mouth James McAvoy hollering his way through The Bangles’s “Eternal Flame” with teary-eyed, yet distinctly murderous sincerity? In short, yes. James Watkins’s rehash of Christian Tafdrup’s coolly sinister original , which goes by the same title in English, is the cleaner, tamer, and less daring of the two. Yet both films play up to their cultural peculiarities, and if you’re willing to trade in the Nordic bleak for a little Anglo-absurdity, this new iteration has its own charms.
The remake, for about two-thirds of its runtime, is largely identical in plot and dialogue. An American couple, Louise ( Mackenzie Davis ) and Ben (Scoot McNairy), on holiday with their daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler), meet an English family – Paddy (McAvoy), Ciara (Aisling Franciosi), and their mute son Ant (Dan Hough) – who invite them back to their West Country farm. Paddy pressures the vegetarian Louise into having a bite of his recently slaughtered prize goose.
Ciara disciplines Agnes for chewing with her mouth open and not eating her greens, right in front of her own parents. Louise and Ben look past the red flags up until it’s already too late. And while Watkins pulls the original’s final punches, he instead swaps psychological horror for slasher chaos, which works particularly well with how believably pathetic and incompetent McNairy makes Be.