Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Universal Pictures, Shudder
Spoilers ahead for the plot and ending of Speak No Evil, both the 2022 film and the 2024 remake.
Happy endings may send audiences out of the theater smiling, but it’s the bummer endings that create more lasting impressions. A truly bleak ending can enrage and depress, but at its best, it also recontextualizes everything that came before it, ratcheting up the dramatic irony and dread.
Even in the pantheon of bleak endings — Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Oldboy, The Mist — 2022’s Speak No Evil stands out, offering a nauseating descent into hell that turns a darkly funny social satire into an endurance test. The shocking cruelty of the Danish film’s final act was probably never going to jibe with mainstream American sensibilities, so it’s no surprise that the 2024 Blumhouse remake goes in a very different direction. But in trying to avoid the hopelessness of the original ending, the new Speak No Evil loses something important: the point.
Those who have seen the remake — or even just endured the omnipresent trailer — will recognize the plot of the 2022 Danish film. Christian Tafdrup’s Speak No Evil begins with a Danish family, Bjørn (Morten Burian), Louise (Sidsel Siem Koch), and daughter Agnes (Liva Forsberg), befriending Dutch family Patrick (Fedja van Huêt), Karin (Karina Smulders), and son Abel (Marius Damslev) on vacation in Tuscany. Some time later, Patrick and Karin invite their new friends to visit them at their remote country home, and with only minor reservations, Bjørn, Louise, and Agnes decide to take a weekend trip to the Netherlands.
While Patrick and Karin seem warm and friendly, it soon becomes clear that something is not quite right. Abel doesn’t speak, which Patrick says is the result of a birth defect, but the relationship between father and son appears strained, to say the least. The Dutch couple subject the Danes to a series of escalating indignities: encouraging vegetarian Louise to eat meat, sticking them with a hefty restaurant bill, criticizing Agnes in front of her mother. For the most part, Bjørn is too polite to say anything, chalking up any discomfort to cultural differences despite Louise’s increasing alarm.
By the time Bjørn discovers what’s really going on, it’s too late: Patrick and Karin are serial killers who murder parents and kidnap their children. They’ve already disposed of Abel, and they’re coming for Agnes next. Bjørn tries to get his family to safety without revealing the true danger to them, but they’re ambushed by the Dutch couple. Karin cuts out Agnes’ tongue with a pair of scissors — the real reason Abel couldn’t speak — and she’s separated from her parents. Patrick then drives Bjørn and Louise to a quarry, where he and Karin force them to get naked and then stone them to death. The film ends with the Dutch family, new “daughter” Agnes in tow, meeting their next victims.
Cheerful, Speak No Evil is not. But the harrowing last act is not simply nihilism. When Bjørn asks Patrick why he’s doing this, Patrick says, “Because you let me.” Tafdrup’s film is largely about the way we accept mistreatment out of a sense of obligation, or sometimes just to avoid rocking the boat. Throughout the movie, Patrick is testing his victims — are they more concerned with their personal safety or with not appearing rude? Bjørn’s inaction, born out of his desire to be a good and respectful guest, allows his host to do the unthinkable.
The Blumhouse Speak No Evil takes a different approach. The setup is the same: Here, it’s American expats Ben (Scoot McNairy), Louise (Mackenzie Davis), and Agnes (Alix West Lefler) meeting British family Paddy (James McAvoy), Ciara (Aisling Franciosi), and Ant (Dan Hough) on a Tuscan vacation. Much of these early scenes feel like a shot-for-shot remake, down to dialogue repeated verbatim, and while there are some minor changes once we arrive at Paddy and Ciara’s remote farmhouse, the plot beats are nearly identical. Most of the time, a close do-over of a recent foreign film is designed to appeal to U.S. viewers who won’t read subtitles; in this case, the original Speak No Evil is almost all in English, making its American doppelgänger feel extra superfluous.
But the third act lets the new version deviate more boldly from the original. In writer-director James Watkins’s film, it’s Agnes who discovers Paddy and Ciara’s plot after a more proactive Ant shows her incriminating photos of past victims and mimes getting his tongue cut out (why didn’t Abel think of this?). She alerts her parents, who handle the situation far more calmly than any of us would. It seems like the family might actually get away — until they’re forced to turn back to save a drowning Ant.
Rest assured there is no onscreen tongue removal or stoning in this Speak No Evil. At the farmhouse, the American family fights back with everything they can get their hands on — box cutters, carving forks, sulfuric acid. (It’s a bit like Home Alone, though maybe less violent.) After luring Ciara to a high window, Louise hits her with a brick and knocks her off the roof to her death. And while Paddy briefly captures Agnes, she injects him with ketamine, leaving him incapacitated. Ant then bashes his “father’s” head in with a brick, and the new family of four all escape (relatively) unscathed. It’s probably too blood-soaked to be called a happy ending, but compared with the way the 2022 Speak No Evil concludes, this version is downright pleasant.
Without the gut punch of the original ending, however, what’s it all for? On its face, this is still a movie about how social niceties can make us behave against our best interests or, in extreme cases, force us to repress our all-important survival instincts. “We’re all too fucking polite,” Paddy says. He’s constantly insisting that his guests be more honest, prodding them to express how they really feel, even if it’s offensive. Louise finally gets the message. Once Agnes shows her the photos of Paddy and Ciara’s past victims, Louise tells her, “It’s not normal, and we don’t have to pretend it’s normal.”
That’s all well and good, but these deliberate articulations of the movie’s message don’t quite match what we’re seeing. When Ben asks Paddy why he’s doing this and Paddy says “Because you let us,” we know Louise is hiding a box cutter — and moments later, she’s slicing open his face. No one is letting Paddy do anything; the family is very much fighting back!
In the original Speak No Evil, the passivity is the point: One of its darkest moments is Bjørn quietly crying in the car en route to the quarry, seemingly resigned to his fate. In the remake, it’s clear the American family isn’t going down without a fight, and there’s never any real suspense about whether they’ll all make it out alive. The softening of the ending — Paddy even explains that he’s going to sedate Agnes before removing her tongue — undercuts the social satire that made its predecessor so effective. Speak No Evil is meant to be a sick joke, and it doesn’t work without the punch line.
Beyond that, the new film has too much on its mind for its hits to land. While the bleak original was satisfied with the explanation that Patrick and Karin are simply psychopaths, the American version naturally needs to find a deeper reason for their crimes. Paddy is doing this because they let him, sure, but also because he’s going to steal all their money and this is how he makes a living. Also, he had a rough childhood. (Couldn’t be contemporary horror without trauma!) And he’s an emblem of toxic masculinity, which is why McAvoy modeled his performance on Andrew Tate.
These revelations are clearly an attempt to add complexity to Patrick’s character, but they only muddle the message further — in large part because none of it really goes anywhere. Perhaps there is something to the idea of a men’s-rights activist challenging a meek father to throw off the shackles of polite society and protect his family, but the concept never amounts to anything but a passing thought. Blumhouse’s Speak No Evil is burdened by restraint; it dangles challenging themes and darkness in front of audiences but balks at traumatizing them the way the original did. The cowardly “happy” ending underscores the real failure of the remake — a refusal to follow through.
