Speak No Evil
Speak No Evil
Speak No Evil is another movie that features James McAvoy in a deranged villain role, which is not a bad thing as He is very good in it. This one is though quite different from his a multiple personality character he portrayed in M. Night Shyamalan’s Split and Glass.
Here he is Paddy, a true gentleman farmer and a former surgeon, where his wit and charm hides … well, what is concealed becomes the core focus in this film where American couple Ben (Scoot McNairy) and Louise (Mackenzie Davis) living in London invite themselves for a weekend to the farmhouse of Paddy and his wife Ciara (Aisling Franciosi) at whose farmhouse invite them over.
Their slow-burn pacing is a strength of the film and not a drawback. Speak No Evil plays best when it is concerned about the growing paranoia of the Americans, and falters towards the last quarter of the movie when the supposedly psychological thriller turns into a formulaic action thriller. But for a good three quarter of the way this blumhouse production is in its an entertainingly elevated genre piece.
James Watkins, the director of Eden Lake and The Woman in Black among others, appears to stabilize his skills in the lure viewers into the movie which is based on the 2022 Danish thriller Gaesterne. The action, however, begins in picturesque Italy; the main characters, Ben and Louise, are there on holiday with their little daughter, 11-year-old Agnes (Alix West Lefler), a nervous child permanently holding onto a toy rabbit named Hoppy – her “worry bunny”.
When these people are on vacation, they meet Paddy, Ciara and their son Ant (Dan Hough). Paddy states that Ant cannot utter a word as Ant’s tongue was deformed since birth. McAvoy softens the character of Paddy so that he is a charming and jolly man yet a little too overenthusiastic about befriending everyone. He is the sort of man who can amicably argue with Louise that she is a meat-hater without changing it into an argument at any stage.
Once back in London, the couple receives an invitation for Paddy’s weekend which they find surprising and Louise, who has never felt so comfortable with him, does not comply. Ben is eager to say yes, and reasons that the children, who are both cousins and are looking for playmates anyway, are getting on pretty well why not.
From the beginning of the movie to the very end, the back and forth between Ben and Louise elevates the movie Speak No Evil diabolical more than just a suspense of who or what horrible thing is about to occur next. Davis manages to hold us captive and make us appreciate the fact that Louise’s doting nature makes her purposely do things that affect her badly. Ben has relocated to London with his family for a job he was soon retrenched from, what a selfish man.
He, too, remains muddled for a far longer period of time than is categorical for him, and that is because he believes in what he wants to see and not what is staring him in the face. However, both McNairy and Davis have not allowed their characters to break for the long time even after the screenplay has had the last breath.
The very blurry line between beautiful and shabby defining farmhouse also has a production design which creates suspicion (there are stained glass doors on the bedroom doors) but it is not scary in the least. There must be, of course, no cell service as it is very remote.
Questions were asked: Was there a single horror film in which the line on the landline did not get ripped off at some point? Yet, Watkins does not indulge in or call attention to those tropes, though, as he leads us to question the riddle of Paddy and how long will it take Ben and Louise before they snap out of it and run for the hills.
The games played by Paddy start about the time the guests reach the place on stage. Understanding, yes. Here is where the games begin again because Paddy wants Louise to take the first cut of the lamb. It was his, he killed and cooked it, and so what. There is bullying but through a grin. Well, let’s say it this way, Mcaboy heightens the suspension now and then.
In Speak No Evil at one point he adds a performance of Philip Larkin’s “This Be the Verse,” and reading out the lines that talk about how families destroy you brings in a new threat to the performance. Which by the second act starts feeling too much like a cheap version of Virginia Woolf’s Who’s Afraid of? for the guests-baiting, and The Shining- ‘Can you see the crazy nicholson in me?’ Mcavoy asked only for us to brace ourselves for a ‘here’s Johnny!’ Moment full of splendid violence.
Ciara’s slippery character is very well played by Franciosi (The Nightingale) when it needs to be Iiara being active. Lefler has the part from within and convinces as Agnes who can sometimes be more suasive than her parents. And when he twins toward the end of the character Hough (real life can’t have such disability) does it masterfully executing the character wordlessly with the peak of Ant’s time coming.
Regrettably, instead of giving the readers any good shocks, the story becomes overly predictable too many times. There is a ‘you all have to leave the building’ part followed by a ‘please do not ever step foot into that barn again’ and eventually comes the ‘okay I am done, these guys are lost’.
The last dread battle fight over everything between good and evil with knives and guns all drawn, turns out to be a damp squib, even though one must give it to Louise that she devised a way of using house hold cleaning detergents as guns. And all the actors are so game, straight through to the end, that they almost compensate for this last foolishness.
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- Genre: Drama, horror
- Country: United States
- Director: James Watkins
- Cast: James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis, Scoot McNairy
