Speak No Evil Remake Director Explains Why Ending Was Changed

Speak No Evil writer and director James Watkins has explained why he didn’t use the 2022 movie’s ending in the new remake.

Speak No Evil was released in United States theaters this past weekend. The film, which stars James McAvoy and Mackenzie Davis, is a remake of the 2022 Danish horror movie directed by Christian Tafdrup.

While the first two acts of the Danish and the American films play out relatively similarly, Tafdrup’s movie becomes much darker in the third act as the main couple, played by Morten Burian and Sidsel Siem Koch, are brutally killed only after their daughter is kidnapped and intentionally mutilated in a particularly gruesome scene.

What did James Watkins say about Speak No Evil’s ending?

Regarding why the new, Blumhouse version of Speak No Evil went with a different ending, Watkins told Variety, “In Christian’s film, it takes it to the very end — this notion of how polite society can shackle you. I wanted to get to that endpoint in the second act. And then to build thematically on it because of the mortal danger. Scoot McNairy’s character is this man who feels part of the scrap heap. He sees this mentor figure in Paddy; this bad mentor who promises an old-school masculinity. Ben signs up for that and thinks this loose couple will unlock them and that it’ll be this weird couples therapy weekend.

“And then the irony, is that when we get into the third act, this kind of model is seen to be completely false but also this idea of what Ben thinks is his masculinity, or what it should be, is completely false. The person who actually steps up is his wife, and the notion of this kind of these kind of tropes of masculinity are shown to be complete nonsense. It’s not sort of gendered, who is strong.

“And then also with Ant, the young boy, I wanted to track that whole theme there, in terms of the Philip Larkin poem of how violence is sort of cyclical. ‘Man hands on misery to man.’ There’s a real ambivalence about Ant killing Paddy. People might want the catharsis of that release, but I don’t think you can say it’s a Hollywood ending. It’s a pretty European version of a Hollywood ending. It’s not triumphant. It’s not an easy solution, saying, ‘Okay, our problems are behind us.’”

Speak No Evil is now playing in United States theaters.

Brandon Schreur

Brandon Schreur has been writing about comics, movies, television shows, and all things pop culture for roughly five years. He's a lifelong cinephile who spends way, way too much money buying Blu-rays and trade paperbacks. You can find him on twitter at @brandonschreur.