Speak No Evil Parent Guide

Louise (Mackenzie Davis), her husband Ben (Scoot McNairy), and their 12-year-old daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler) are enjoying a vacation in the gorgeous Italian countryside when they meet another family staying at their resort. Paddy (James McAvoy) and his wife Ciara (Aisling Franciosi) are holidaying with their son Ant (Dan Hough), who suffers from a condition that makes it almost impossible for him to talk. Despite a few social hiccups, the two families seem to get along well – well enough that when Louise and Ben receive an invitation for a long weekend at Paddy’s farm in England’s West Country, they pack up and head out.

From the moment they arrive, Louise feels that something isn’t quite right. Ben agrees, but he doesn’t think it’s a big deal and isn’t willing to offend their hosts. Agnes has more than a feeling, though, and the longer she spends with Ant the more she sees what’s really going on at the farm, miles from the nearest neighbor…

Speak No Evil suffers from some truly agonizing pacing problems. The first two acts crawl through a geological epoch during which the protagonists do…nothing. Paddy and Ciara keep getting weirder and violating more boundaries and every time something happens, we just slide into another scene with the same outline. But since our protagonists are a bunch of spineless morons, this pattern drags on and on and on and on until about the last half hour. With the third act comes all of the violence, action, and character change in the film.

I think the filmmakers were trying to stretch out the tension, but it’s like trying to make your milk last longer by adding orange juice. Not only is there almost no tension by the end of the film; by that point I was so thoroughly annoyed with the characters that I wasn’t really too fussed if they found a way out of their mess or not. It’s like expecting me to feel sorry for somebody who walked blithely past nearly two hours’ worth of warning signs and then fell into a pit. That one’s on you, boss.

The worst thing a thriller can be is boring, but parents aren’t going to be wild about the brutal violence, frequent profanity, or near-constant social drinking either. Viewers also treated to a scene of Paddy and Ciara performing a mimed sex act under the table during dinner, which I could have happily lived without. And you can! In fact, you can even see what this movie was supposed to be, since it’s a remake of a Danish film of the same name which came out all of two years ago. I haven’t seen it, but even reading the Wikipedia synopsis annoyed me. Making major changes in a remake of a film which came out so recently screams “shameless cash grab”, and this tired cinematic retread is just about as watchable as that sounds.