It snuck up on us, but the American remake of a foreign film hardly seems like the totem to failed imagination that it once did. Being generous, it’s practically becoming a lost art in the age of franchise maintenance. How can an overseas breakthrough be rejiggered into a one-off multiplex programmer? Blumhouse’s latest genre play “Speak No Evil” — which rips its title, premise and even entire gags from Christian Taldrip’s totally-f’ed-up festival standout from two years ago — is a reminder that the answer is usually pretty easy: End it as a crowd-pleaser, in this case with James McAvoy hulking out after he’s gleefully played with his food for 80 minutes.
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As with the original film, writer-director James Watkins’ remake studies a couple that stretches their belief in the kindness of strangers to absurd proportions. Americans Ben and Louise (Scoot McNairy and Mackenzie Davis, in a winning reunion of AMC’s “Halt and Catch Fire”) are first seen listlessly vacationing in Italy with their 11-year-old daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler), before an encounter with Paddy (McAvoy) and his wife Ciara (Aisling Franciosi) brightens up the trip. The British couple are gregarious enough to compensate for their mute, distant son Ant (Dan Hough). Weeks later, back in their rainy, jobless lives in London, Ben and Louise receive an invitation to spend a weekend at Paddy and Ciara’s farmhouse. It’s a sizable amount of time to spend with people who are essentially strangers. Then again, these are the closest friends that Ben and Louise have managed to accrue since relocating to Europe.
Watkins introduces Paddy’s dusty rural property in a disarming drone shot, at an angle that could also bask in the wreckage of a besieged war zone. The message is clear: this place is no good. Brimming with ugly paintings and dirty blankets, the tight amenities come with an especially unwelcome surprise: Agnes will have to share a bedroom with Ant. Ben and Louise shake off the faux pas, but it’s just the first in what will be a punishing gauntlet.
Taldrip’s original “Speak No Evil” played as an aggressively controlled (and especially schematic) examination of that type of adherence to the unspoken rules of polite society, and how agreeability can suppress a blaring fight-or-flight response. While this remake begins with a similar tension, McAvoy’s big grin full of knives quickly dissolves any semblance of social credibility. But the film matches Paddy’s boorishness and commits to being a comedy about a bad marriage crumbling under the fist of a freak-of-nature vacation host. Though it’s hardly his modus operandi, McAvoy has proven that he can go over the top like few actors of his generation can, with memorable performances like the high-as-a-kite bad lieutenant of “Filth,” or the tender-hearted, multiple-personality supervillain seen in M. Night Shyamalan’s “Split.”
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Playing a guy you just can’t ever win with, the actor proves to be a robust motor for “Speak No Evil,” even though the film doesn’t risk defining the aggro Paddy. There’s a flash of politically incorrect grandstanding in how he interrogates Louise’s vegetarianism, a tone of misogyny in the way he plays ally to Ben while discussing his marriage, even a throwaway line hinting at possible pedophilic tendencies. Such odds and ends of deviant behavior don’t add up to a coherent personality, much less an ideology that could help tip the film into genuine provocation. McAvoy carries scenes through to some memorable ends — pantomimed fellatio while dining out, a micromanaged “Cotton Eye Joe” dance routine — but “Speak No Evil” can’t spin much lingering tension from his performance as it heads to an obvious destination.
Instead, the driving performance of the film ends up coming from McNairy, a reliable supporting player who amply rises to this rare occasion of the joke being on him. As “Speak No Evil” reveals troubles in its central marriage, Ben’s wounded masculinity becomes the bedrock of the couple’s inaction. All the better when the remake makes a complete divergence from the original film’s grim denouement and instead ventures into “Straw Dogs” territory, complete with British hick henchmen, barricaded corridors and a Yankee that must verify his manhood. The violence seems even more thinly conceived than the comedy of bad manners that came before. But the paralyzed fear in between the gunshots, given truly pathetic dimensions by McNairy, confirms and furthers the film’s winning sense of humor.
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