Speak No Evil (2024) - McAvoy Shines But Can’t Save This Unnecessary Remake - REVIEW

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Blumhouse is a house name when it comes to horror movies and Speak No Evil is a remake that I'm still processing what I've just seen. It’s not perfect, but it’s a remake of a Danish film from 2022 and kept me interested the entire almost two hours, sometimes the movie does a good job being a psychological thriller but other times it misses the mark and attempts to be a horror film, so I’d give it a solid 7.5/10.

The story centers around American couple Ben and Louise, living in London with their daughter Agnes, and the vacation come together with this super intense British couple, Paddy and Ciara, in an Italian town. Everything starts normally enough, they spend time together, their kids get along, and they seem to get on well despite Paddy being a little over the top. Then a few weeks later they get invited to go and stay for a weekend at Paddy and Ciara's farmhouse in Devon, and it's when things get weird. Ben is attracted to Paddy's assured outlook on life, which may be a result of not having a job and feeling a bit low on himself, and Louise is properly wary.

• IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27534307/
• Platform: AppleTV+

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The movie starts showing its true colors once they get to the farmhouse. James McAvoy playing Paddy goes from being just intense to straight up uncomfortable, forcing Louise to eat meat even though she's vegetarian and having some really concerning behavior towards his son Ant who supposedly has this condition that affects his tongue and means he can't speak. Then the whole thing gets more twisted when Agnes finds out some pretty disturbing things about our hosts they have an array of watches that look like they belong to other men and a photo album that shows that they have a history of families checking in before them.

Sometimes it feels like he’s channeling his character from Split a bit too much, but James McAvoy absolutely owns this movie, he has develop this charisma or say internal conflict that suits perfectly this type of twisted minds characters, its like the guy saying "IM CRAZY" in a very over the top way and still make it believable. This mix of charm and complete psycho that he is, somehow again works, this time to play Paddy, even when it probably shouldn't. He goes from being this friendly host to showing us little peak of something much darker underneath it, while it's pretty over the top sometimes, it's still really interesting to watch. Mackenzie Davis has also got a really strong performance as Louise, she makes the character’s growing unease feel real and justified, with perfect weakness and denial, Scoot McNairy plays Ben who you will understand why he keeps ignoring the red flags, even when everything is screaming at them to get the fuck out.

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I can see why the movie is getting mixed reactions, been a remake of the original Danish version isn't being met with a lot of happy people who saw the original, as they say it loses a lot of the tension and social commentary that made the first one so effective, but if you haven't seen the original this version still succeeds in generating some truly creepy moments, although it does get bogged down by some typical Hollywood cliches in the end, been a remake is the only true flaw and only for those who are fan of the original movie.

There are some scenes that really work for the movie and will stay inside your head, like when Paddy begins to show his true colors during dinner or when Agnes finds out the truth about their hosts, the movie does have an interesting way of building tension, sometimes a little too hard to be clever. Their cinematography is a little dramatic with these really intense close ups of McAvoy's face that sometimes pull me out of the moment instead of pulling me deeper into it. It's not hard to see why there is something compelling about watching this family dig themselves deeper into this nightmare situation because they are just too polite to speak up.

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Many might look at Speak No Evil as just another Hollywood remake, but the movie does its own thing with some creative twist to the story, not everything will be exact as the original one since there has to be some new sauce into it. In essence the film is the Danish original with added layers of issues that had not been in the original, whether marital problems with Ben and Louise or them having struggled to adjust to life in London.

McAvoy’s take on Paddy is a different kind of menace, one that mixes charm with a spike of threat that feels more a critique of toxic behavior. One of the key aspects of this remake is how Ant character is given more importance to the plot, making him an active role in revealing the truth of whats going on instead of just been another victim. This entire aspect gives the story a more emotional turn that it didn't have before, to compare it to the original movie I had to watch it and now I understand why a remake was necessary, not only because its a Hollywood remake but it tries to lift up the story making it more commercial and appealing to the western audience.

While fans of the original were understandably controversial to change the ending, the desire to look at different themes that included family bonds and survival rather just than mimic the Danish version, the remake also has a bit of fun with viewers expectations in the way that events of the original are already known and so this something that the remake can play with through what could be changed, what might have been changed and what could have been tweaked.

The Danish ending is completely different from this one, it goes for a more traditional home invasion scenario where the family fights back, then we get this whole chase sequence, they try to escape after Agnes tells them what she found out about Paddy and Ciara's previous victims. Then there is that twist where Ciara claims she was one of Paddy's first victims, we never know if this is true or another manipulation. Naturally the movie ends with this intense confrontation where the family and Ant prevail over the captors, while it might feel a little too neat and conventional for some tastes it is definitely more crowd pleasing than the original's heavier ending.

Comparing both as to what it was and now what it is, now that I think about it, Speak No Evil (2024) is one of those movies that you can still watch even when it isn’t that great. It’s like watching those nasty videos of people cleaning that you still find satisfying, you kept asking yourself whats wrong with this people that let it get that dirty, but you can’t look away. It's a movie that attempts to say something about politeness and social dynamics but tries to hard to give those typical horror movie thrills. McAvoy’s performance and a number of genuinely tense scenes make it worth watching, even if you’re not sure if you actually enjoyed it or not.

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