When an American film company decides to remake a recent foreign language hit, it always reminds me how far we haven’t come as a society. As Americans, the majority of us do not pay attention to foreign language films, so they have to remake them so that we’ll watch them. And the coup de grace here is that about 60% of Danish filmmaker Christian Tafdrup’s Speak No Evil (2022) is in English. I had watched the original version a few months ago in preparation for this, because I’d heard the trailer for director James Watkins’ English language remake, produced by Jason Blum’s Blumhouse Studios, gave essentially the whole plot away. So I made a point to watch that film before I saw the trailer. And I’m glad I did, because that trailer would play before just about every movie I saw in theaters for the subsequent several months. It’s finally out. Finally, I never have to see that trailer again. But is this movie worth mine or anyone else’s time? My answer surprised me.

Louise (Mackenzie Davis) and Ben (Scoot McNairy) are an American couple vacationing in Italy with their 11-year old daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler). They meet charming British couple,  Paddy (James McAvoy) and Ciara (Aisling Francoisi), who invite them to spend a weekend at their countryside estate. They do, and they quickly become uncomfortable due to various reasons, but are hesitant to leave and offend them. This lovely holiday weekend gradually becomes a psychological nightmare.

Tafdrup’s original Danish film is primarily about the cultural differences between a Dutch and Danish couple, and how those differences manifest and make this relationship strained. It’s also about the ways different couples parent their children and then it becomes shockingly violent and horrifically bleak and incredibly dark in the last ten minutes, so much so that it feels like that ending belongs in an entirely different film. I was convinced the new Speak No Evil would be like when they remade Funny Games, or when Gus Van Sant remade Psycho, where we’re essentially doing a shot for shot copy of the film that inspired it. Writer/director James Watkins also does not have the kind of filmography that would suggest that he would have anything interesting to bring to this material. 

As always, I am happy to be proven wrong. Speak No Evil (2024) is a film about the perils of politeness. The original film is about that too, but this is less about the cultural differences between an American and British couple, and more about how hard it can be to be honest with people if honesty can be perceived as rudeness. It sometimes feels like it’s easier to put up with a situation where you are personally uncomfortable, to avoid being perceived as rude, or impolite. We do it when we go visit extended family on holidays, or when we go to the after-work happy hour with coworkers who you see enough as it is on a daily basis. In these situations, the other person isn’t often trying to kill you, but Speak No Evil is something of a cautionary tale that is saying sometimes it’s better to just be the asshole.

There are fewer things more worth going to the movies than James McAvoy in a villain role. And he devours every bit of this juicy part, and he is so exciting to watch. I think there’s a lot of thematically interesting stuff going on here, but even if there was not, McAvoy’s performance would be worth the cost of admission on its own. Mackenzie Davis is also very good in a role that could be not much. I particularly liked Aisling Francoisi here as well, she plays the menace of her character with a certain aloofness, and it’s hard to guess what her character is thinking. Is she a victim to her husband’s menace or is she just as vile as he is? It’s a while before we know for sure.

Speak No Evil (2024) plays a lot like the 2022 film it was based on for the first two thirds, and once we get to the third act, this becomes something completely different. The sense of building tension and malice is stronger here, and when the villainous couple begin to show their true colors, you begin to remember all of the red flags that existed in them from our very first scene. The twists and turns in this one surprisingly feel more organic to the overall story being told, and I feel like this is a more cohesive story. And the buildup and suspense in this version of the story feels elevated. Perhaps that’s due to the great work of people like McAvoy and Davis, but maybe that’s in the changes presented in the screenplay, and how that’s decided. It is notably less bleak than the 2022 film, but overall I left the film feeling satisfied, and not like I just wanted to crawl into a hole and die. So I think that’s ultimately a positive.

Speak No Evil (2024) enters the short list of worthy English language remakes to international films, because it feels like more of a companion piece to the film that preceded it, rather than something trying to dumb it down for American viewers. Remaking a movie so soon after the original means it’s going to be impossible not to compare the two, but this screenplay kind of encourages those comparisons. There is a lot going on here that feels thematically different from the original in an exciting way. It is weirder and meaner and funnier than I would have expected, based on the people behind the camera, and it’s easily Blumhouse’s movie of the year. And also we have James McAvoy. Just go see it for James McAvoy.