By Seth Lukas Hynes
Speak No Evil
Starring James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis and Aisling Franciosi
MA15+
4.5/5
Speak No Evil is a supremely suspenseful psychological horror film based on a 2022 Danish film of the same name.
While on vacation, Louise (Mackenzie Davis), her husband Ben (Scoot McNairy) and their daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler) come to stay at the country estate of their new friends Paddy (James McAvoy) and Ciara (Aisling Franciosi), but their stay soon turns sinister.
Speak No Evil is a riveting slow-burn: you share the guest family’s unease around their intense, subtly off hosts, and this unease steadily evolves into dread through a string of pushed boundaries, microaggressions and cleverly-planted clues.
McAvoy joins Josh Hartnett from Trap with another disturbing portrayal of an affable family man with rage seething beneath the surface (and just as Chris Pine based his character in Don’t Worry Darling on Jordan Peterson, McAvoy based his persona in Speak No Evil on professional misogynist Andrew Tate).
Speak No Evil explores domineering masculinity and how women are often pressured to put up with bad situations. Davis is a figure of warmth and steely common sense as Louise, Ben ignores or even leans into Paddy’s inappropriate behaviour, and Franciosi is like the dark version of a pick-me girl as Ciara: playing along with Paddy to survive. Lefler and Dan Hough both deliver remarkable performances as the respective couples’ children.
Speak No Evil has beautiful rural cinematography, an eerie score and builds to an incredibly stressful final act, which has some brilliant misdirects and shades of Straw Dogs and especially The Shining.
Speaking of cinematography, Speak No Evil holds the camera refreshingly still and steady, which is rare in modern cinema.
A clever, superbly-paced character-driven horror film, Speak No Evil is playing in most Victorian cinemas.
