Movie review: Horror flick 'Speak No Evil’ offers much to appreciate

There’s a moment both chilling and morbidly funny late in “Speak No Evil” when one character asks “why you’re doing this,” and another character — their tormentor — replies, with blank confusion, “because you let us.”

In some ways, the real “villain” of “Speak No Evil” is the social contract of politeness — our human desire to not offend.

We’ve all been in conversations, or at parties, or in work environments where boundaries — however benignly — are crossed, and we don’t say anything because we don’t want to make trouble. But what if the “trouble” was more than just acute social embarrassment? What if you were risking life or death?

The film, a remake of a 2022 Danish film (unseen by me), concerns two couples who meet on vacation in Italy.

Ben and Louise Dalton (Scoot McNairy and Mackenzie Davis) are Americans who have recently moved to London with their daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler); while Paddy (James McAvoy) and Ciara (Aisling Franciosi) are a British couple whose spontaneity and friendliness immediately charms the Daltons.

Ben and Louise take Paddy and Ciara up on an offer to stay with them at their bucolic home in the English countryside.

The only indicator that something might be wrong is Ant (Dan Hough), Paddy and Ciara’s son, a sullen boy whose eyes are permanently haunted. The parents tell Ben and Louise that Ant was born with a small tongue, making him shy and withheld.

But it goes beyond shyness. Alone with Agnes, Ant tries to write a note (in a language Agnes can’t read), then swallows the note when his mother approaches. Either something is very wrong with this kid, or with his parents.

The first two acts of “Speak No Evil” are the most effective, as Ben and Louise play a week long game of “is it us, or are these people weird…?”

Paddy and Ciara are indeed a bit “much” — ingratiating to the point of irritating, prone to asking probing, personal questions that would make a therapist blush — but they seem more open and communicative than the Daltons.

Ben and Louise have both clearly been through analysis, but they mostly use therapy-speak terms to dance around their problems rather than confront them. There’s an interestingly nuanced argument scene where both characters use the words “I’m sorry” like a get-out-of-jail-free card, as though once you say those words the other person is supposed to forget what they were angry about.

If it weren’t for the specter of Ant lurking in the background, we could almost believe, like the Daltons, that the problem is them — that Paddy and Ciara’s tendency to overstep boundaries is simply an innocent mistake being misread.

It would be going too far to say that “Speak No Evil” falls apart in its final third. It’s more that having proposed some interesting ambiguities, the movie is forced to explain them, and explanations are never as interesting in art as questions.

Of course, we know things are unlikely to turn out to be alright with Paddy and Ciara — there wouldn’t be much of a movie if it was all just mistaken intentions, would there? — but the film’s final stretch still clicks into place a bit too mechanically.

The final action set piece is well-executed, but it’s still a sequence we’ve seen a million times before: a showdown in a remote location, with characters revealing themselves under pressure.

There’s still a lot to appreciate in “Speak No Evil.” Director James Watkins and cinematographer Tim Maurice-Jones adopt a classical style, avoiding cheap camera and editing tricks for their effects.

I knew I was in good hands from the first frames, as an angle from the back-seat of a moving car makes the stoic face of little Ant look like it’s floating down a country road, a creepy effect that doesn’t feel like it’s straining.

McNairy and Davis are effective leads, taking characters that could seem like stereotypes and making them feel like real people. As the inviting British couple, Franciosi and McAvoy ably walk a tricky tightrope where they have to turn on a dime from possibly-scary to possibly-benign.

McAvoy’s characterization kind of goes off the rails in the last third — he starts snarling like a rabid dog, puffing himself up like a cartoon bully, transforming into an unstoppable killer out of a slasher film. But he’s really just doing what the script requires him to do.

It’s churlish on some level to criticize a good genre movie for being a good genre movie, and “Speak No Evil” is certainly that; the popcorn munchers will get their money’s worth. But the rich material in the first two acts of hints at something more interesting, left unexplored.

C.B. Jacobson is an Annandale native who makes independent films at Buddy Puddle Productions, and writes about movies at picturegoer.substack.com. Look for him at the Emagine Monticello movie theater on Tuesday nights — in the middle of the auditorium, with a book in hand.