For the hardened horror fan, it can be disconcertingly easy to shrug off even the bleakest of endings. Not so much with Danish filmmaker Christian Tafdrup’s savage 2022 shocker Speak No Evil. Co-written with his equally twisted brother Mads, it deceptively presents as a stinging satire on British-style pass-agg politeness, as a buttoned-up couple begrudgingly falls in with a hectically loose one while holidaying in Tuscany. Foolishly agreeing to catch up again after they’ve gone their separate ways, a trip to the wilder pairs’ creepy rural retreat rapidly escalates way beyond a poor Airbnb review.
Based on director James Watkins’ nasty and similarly-themed getaway-gone-feral debut, Eden Lake, you’d hope that his English-language remake – fresh off the Blumhouse production line – would hold onto the hell that is other people. But the story’s grimmest edges have been shorn off, despite Watkins teaming up with the Tafdrups on a retooled screenplay. Still, this alternative path is seriously unnerving in its own way.
Likeable Scoot McNairy plays nice guy Ben, married to Louise (Mackenzie Davis). American expats in London, their relationship is on edge after his work has fallen through and some dirty laundry has been aired. Hence a much-needed holiday to Italy, where they meet chest-beating Paddy (James McAvoy) and unruly Ciara (Aisling Franciosi of The Nightingale). There’s an immediate awkwardness offset only by the bond formed between their shy son Ant (Dan Hough) and the Americans’ anxious daughter Agnes (Riverdale’s Alix West Lefler). But when Ben and Louise reluctantly accept an invitation to catch up again at the more couple’s ramshackle Gloucester farmhouse, littered with Ciara’s luridly crude pottery sculptures and with no reliable wi-fi signal, a fiendish trap is set.
It deceptively presents as a stinging satire on British pass-agg politeness
Amplifying the class snobbery, Louise can barely conceal her distaste for Paddy and Ciara’s lifestyle. But when things get space-invading weird fast, Davis expertly conveys her steadily spiralling panic attack as McNairy’s Ben flip-flops between being freaked out by and strangely drawn to Paddy’s animal magnetism. With the men indulging in mutual cliffside scream therapy, McAvoy’s darting, predatory eyes project roid rage that’s ready to erupt. Anges is easily the smartest of the lot, her team-up with Ant eventually uncovering a terrible secret locked away in an outhouse.
If the finale tones down the original’s teeth-gnashing nihilism, you’ll grip your seat just as tightly as the action takes to loosely-tiled rooftops and a banger from The Bangles drops.
In cinemas worldwide Sep 12.