"Speak No Evil"

  ☆☆☆☆ 

As an exercise in suspense and tension, Speak No Evil works fantastically well, so well that it's not until after the credits have rolled and you're in the car and on the way home that you might begin to start questioning some of the basic elements of the plot, especially in the last 20 minutes or so.

At that point, it's far too late to matter, so if Speak No Evil feels a little weaker in retrospect than it did while on screen, it seems pointless to quibble. This movie does what it does with ruthless efficiency, it's got a great, long wind-up, and when it sets everything in motion it's almost impossible to turn away from the screen, even in the bloodiest moments, when you most desperately want to. Speak No Evil is, in the moment, so good that it forces you to watch.

This movie is based on a Dutch film, also called Speak No Evil, that I've never seen, though from what I've read the title of that film may make a little more sense than the title of this film. In both, a friendly couple and their daughter meet a boisterous, borderline irritating, couple from the middle of nowhere. They have a son who has difficulty communicating. The more gregarious couple invites the more reserved one to visit their country home.

In this film, the fussier couple is American, and their backstory is convoluted, though suffice it to say they are the kind of people who have moved to London and can afford both a stylish apartment and a Tesla. When they get the invitation to the boondocks—the "West Country," in this version—one of them is hesitant, the other is effusive, but they end up going.

That's where they reunite with Paddy, who says he is a doctor; his wife, Chiara, who does seem a tad young for the man; and their son, Ant, the one who doesn't talk. Ben is the American, a man who has lost his way, though his wife Louise and his daughter Agnes are trying hard to reconcile the family's many complications.

That the weekend doesn't go as planned won't come as a surprise, though exactly why and what the nice American couple discover is something you should know as little about as possible before watching the film.

This is the kind of movie that takes place in a rambling old country home with neighbors whose proximity is measured in miles, not meters. In the history of film and literature, nothing good has ever happened in a country home like this one (that even extends to the heartbreaking conclusion of Call Me By Your Name), so it should be no surprise that things go very, very badly for the Americans.

Much blood is spilled, and many words are shouted or whispered at the screen during the course of Speak No Evil, and the movie is so tautly made that none of its iffier elements matter at all, not even when that one character pushes that other character into the water at the end in a moment that defies all logic and credibility. But, still, you're likely to be with the movie because you just want to know how it's going to end, who's going to get out of this alive, and how. Or if.

In that, my understanding is that Speak No Evil comes to a radically different conclusion than the original, much in the same way, I suppose, as the twisted, evil, shocking ending of George Sluizer's exemplary 1988 thriller The Vanishing "had" to be revised for Hollywood. Since I've not seen the original Speak No Evil, all I know is that this remake of the film has an efficient, effective and satisfactory—if not entirely satisfying—ending, but one that is vastly different than the original.

Yet with a towering central performance by James McAvoy that is matched in enthusiasm, if not volume, by the full cast, and a sly satirical manner that offers a lot of humor amid the bloodshed, Speak No Evil works well. Maybe not as well as the first, from all I've heard, but quite well enough on its own terms.

Viewed September 15, 2024 — AMC Burbank 6

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