“Speak No Evil” Spoiler-Free Review

Speak No Evil: Spoiler Free Review

Do you know the parts in some suspense/horror movies where the group gets separated, someone goes into a dark, creepy basement to investigate a strange noise, gets chased up the stairs and instead of running out of the front door, runs up another flight of stairs, wrestles with a dark figures in the hallway and in the commotion is able to get that dark figure’s gun, escapes out of a window but twists their ankle while dropping from the second story, gets chased into the woods but can’t run because of their ankle, remembers they accidentally left the gun in the house and circles back to get it?

If you took all of those ridiculous tropes, boiled them down to their essence, and ran it through a dumbed down, mind-numbing, shockingly bad American Hollywood filter, you would have Speak No Evil.

The film has a good cast, which on paper makes it look like a winner. It stars James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis, Aisling Franciosi, Alix West Lefler, Dan Hough, and Scoot McNairy, and is about an American family of three who are on holiday in Italy and meet another family at the resort they are staying at. They quickly make friends with the family and are invited to come visit their very remote cabin in the countryside. It is here that they realize that everything is not as it should be.

Their hosts, Paddy (McAvoy) and Sierra (Aisling Franciosi), turn out to ever so slightly bat-shit crazy, and the family realizes they are essentially trapped. Except they’re not. They have a few chances to leave, but laps in logic and some poor writing won’t allow them to do so. I would imagine that’s how the rest of the theater felt, as well.

This is a remake of a 2022 Danish film by the same name. It was a critical success and Blumhouse bought the rights shortly after its release to shoot an American version. There are some stark changes between this one and the original, and all of the nuance seems to have been sucked out of it. Instead of adding anything interesting, they took the original, dumbed it down a little bit, threw in some good ol’ U.S. high octane, in-your-face-action, a different ending, and slapped the same name on it.

It’s not well-plotted, it’s clunky at times, Mackenzie Davis doesn’t sell the screams, and I watched the guy in front of me hurt his head facepalming because the characters would not stop making ridiculous decisions. Hope he’s okay.

There is a silver lining. McAvoy is a beast (no pun intended for you Split fans out there, being one of them myself) in this film. He owns the character, and is actually one of my favorite working actors. How lucky were X-Men fans to get him and Michael Fassbender working together on screen in those movies. I’m digressing right now. He’s a pleasure to watch in this film, although there is a difference between how he plays Paddy and how Dutch stage actor Fedja van Huêt played the same character (called Patrick in this one). I don’t want to compare the two films any more than I have to, but I feel like Paddy needed a little more subtlety to sell a few of the scenes, as did the whole film.

I enjoyed Aisling Franciosi’s performance as Paddy’s not-so-sure-if-we-should-trust-her-or-not partner Sierra. That line is harder to walk than it looks. And Mackenzie Davis did well except for when she had to look scared, which was most of the movie.

This film is a watered down, made-for-American-sensibilities “horror” movie. Maybe I’m just grumpy from using up too much brain power during this movie internally yelling at the characters. Or maybe it was just a bad flick.

Rating: 2/5

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