See No Evil

James McAvoy devours the scenery and an unsuspecting family in this thriller

James McAvoy claws through so-so writing to make Speak No Evil a fun watch.

Louise and Ben Dalton (Mackenzie Davis and Scoot McNairy) are very good at keeping up appearances. On the surface, they look like a happy couple with an adorable daughter, Agnes (Alix West Lefler). That’s not a mistake, they work very hard to appear happy to everyone around them. Sure, their marriage is faltering, and Agnes is a tangle of neurosis, but they must keep up appearances.

And their commitment to keeping up appearances is exactly what draws them into the orbit of Paddy and Ciara (James McAvoy and Aisling Franciosi). Charming, audacious, and mysterious, Paddy and Ciara are everything Ben and Louise aren’t. They spend a week in Italy admiring their new friends and trying to live life more fearlessly.

In their hopes to revive their marriage and be more like their new friends, Louise and Ben agree to visit Paddy and Ciara at their farm for a week.

From there, things get weird.

But even as their perfect image of Paddy and Ciara begins to crumble, Louise and Ben aren’t willing to be impolite and question them. They don’t want to appear rude and they certainly don’t want to make a scene. Is it better to be polite or survive?

Based on a 2022 Danish film with the same title, Speak No Evil is a fairly boilerplate thriller. If you’ve ever seen a movie, you’ll know where this one is going almost immediately. Director James Watkins does an admirable job of setting the scene and tone, but the script he’s working with holds very few surprises.

The film begins as a thriller but quickly turns into a treatise on the dangers of being polite. And that’s the problem. Ben and Louise are so unfailingly polite, so pathetically spineless it’s a bit ridiculous. Louise is a mom who monitors how much ice cream her daughter eats in a day and frets over Agnes’ every move. Yet, she’s cowed into allowing a complete stranger to grab her daughter, put her on a Vespa, and drive the young girl through an Italian village. She’s both a helicopter mom and the most negligent parent on the planet in the same breath. The characters of Ben and Louise are written like they were plucked from a red-pill forum on Reddit talking about beta-cucks and their shrew wives.

Thankfully, while Louise and Ben fall flat, McAvoy’s Paddy is a stunning example of scenery chewing. McAvoy is making quite a career for himself in the camp forum — with fun turns in Split and The Book of Clarence. Speak No Evil is another great entry in the kitsch genre. It’s a difficult thing to go from charismatic to frothing at the mouth while carrying a movie. But McAvoy has an uncanny ability to shudder the warmth and soul out of his eyes with a blink. And it makes him perfect for campy horror movies that are supposed to be laughed at over drinks with a few good friends.  

The film's end deviates from the original movie and is clearly created with a more “American” audience in mind. Essentially, director Watkins eschews the metaphor he’s laboring to develop to present the ending of Straw Dogs. It’s a fun choice, but not one that I’m sure serves the purpose of the movie.

If you’re a fan of campy horror or McAvoy’s histrionics, this movie will not disappoint. This is a flick you should see with a group because yelling at the screen and making jokes is half the fun.

Verdict: McAvoy turns this middling thriller into something truly entertaining.

Speak No Evil is rated R and is available in theaters Sept. 13.