Studio: Shudder
Director: Christian Tafdrup
Writer: Christian Tafdrup, Mads Tafdrup
Producer: Jacob Jarek
Stars: Morten Burian, Sidsel Siem Koch, Fedja van Huet, Karina Smulders, Liva Forsberg, Marius Damslev
Review Score:
Summary:
After meeting on vacation, a husband and wife accept another couple’s invitation for a weekend visit that escalates into a disturbing experience.
Review:
Meeting new people while on a communal getaway always starts with good intentions. First, you become friendly over food, drinks, laughs, and conversation. Then, you become mutual follows on social media so you can stay in touch once the holiday ends. For a little while, maybe you exchange a couple of quick catch-up emails or forward amusing links via text to keep the casualness candle’s flame from fully flickering out. Eventually though, an already tenuous bond starts seeming like a chore that’s not worth the minimal effort to maintain and, as usually happens in such situations, it’s back to being strangers who once read too much into a fleetingly fun time on vacation.
Not so with Bjorn and Louise. With their young daughter Agnes tagging along, the Danish couple’s trip to Tuscany takes an upward turn once they meet Dutch duo Patrick and Karin, whose semi-mute son Abel pairs perfectly with Agnes. The six of them hit it off so well that it’s only a minor surprise when, weeks later, Patrick and Karin send Bjorn and Louise an unexpected invite to visit their remote Holland home for a weekend. Bjorn and Louise rarely do anything adventurous these days. They figure, why not keep up our end of the newfound friendship and accept Patrick and Karin’s offer? As one of their other friends puts it, what’s the worst that could happen?
“Speak No Evil’s” mundane early minutes are mandatory for illustrating the ordinary family life that’s about to be disturbed. Accordingly, action-starved attention spans would be wise to be warned of this long dip into everyday ennui, although the rewards that come later can only be won by recognizing the routine rut Bjorn desperately aches to break free from. Glazed glances express dead dreams and unfulfilled desires as Bjorn endures dinner with frumpy friends, attends his daughter’s flute recital, and does dishes with his wife. Bjorn clearly wants, or rather needs, to pursue an extroverted alternative while Louise remains detoured in copacetic contentment.
Purposefully dull drama begins gradually molding over with small spots of dread not long after Bjorn, Louise, and Agnes make the eight-hour drive to Holland. To Louise’s nonplussed surprise, Patrick and Karin have arranged for Agnes to sleep in Abel’s room, except her makeshift bed is a corner of the floor. Gifts brought from Denmark are seemingly received with vaguely insulting remarks. Then there’s the passive-aggressive matter of Patrick waving off Louise’s vegetarianism by insistently compelling her to taste the wild boar he cooked. These are minor discomforts at first. More threatening circumstances loom on the horizon as “Speak No Evil” poses the challenging question, at what point do polite people stop putting up with social unpleasantness as a courtesy, and when do they start asserting their own agency?
If “Speak No Evil” were an American horror film, the immediate assumption would be that Patrick and Karin have nefarious plans to torture the other couple and/or abduct the little girl. Indeed, Patrick and Karin do have something sinister in store, yet it’s not so clearly telegraphed as a veteran viewer might think. While typical thrillers have conditioned audiences to stare sideways at every drink with an expectation that someone will soon be drugged, “Speak No Evil” takes a less direct, more ambiguous direction into suggestive fear.
The movie’s atmosphere doesn’t come with a frightening feeling of constant tension that forces viewers to dig nails into their seats. Rather, there’s mostly a subtle sense that something is off, and the majority of that mood comes from each actor ably embodying their character types to keep us questioning hidden portions of their personalities. Morten Burian sets the baseline as Bjorn, a nebbish who suppresses urges for emotional release, yet whose compromised wanderlust might be boiling to a breaking point at any moment. Similarly, Fedja van Huet provides the yang to Bjorn’s yin as Patrick, a man whose assertive exterior can be charmingly reassuring, even though he gives off a scent of repressed rage on the cusp of explosion.
Everyone involved reaches their personal limits in due time, although it takes trading the comparatively grounded first two acts for a third act where dots have difficulty connecting logically. “Speak No Evil” is far from the first film to establish someone as the resident worrywart only for them to later let their defenses down. But the way Louise dials back from hyper-alert to inexplicably unconcerned goes against every natural instinct of the protective mother she’s built up to be. When alarm bells ring loudest, some of the Danish couple’s shell-shocked behavior leaves viewers frustratingly dumbfounded rather than emotionally traumatized by proxy. One climactic scene should be a moment to tragically sympathize with Bjorn. Instead, you end up pleading, “Do something other than sit like a statue collecting tears in your aghast mouth.”
Since I’m itemizing narrative flaws, “Speak No Evil” also relies on three or four too many coincidences of timing to pivot plot beats, two of which involve a stuffed rabbit toy in the same sequence. Another critical swing in the final leg would have been drastically altered had Bjorn only said something specific to his wife instead of once again staying silent. For those who know what I’m talking about, there’s also a quizzical overdose on an absolutely comical amount of photographs indicating the Dutch couple has been playing their game for an impossible number of years.
Despite landing awkwardly enough to sprain both ankles, and a slow start to get its macabre muscles stretched, the program “Speak No Evil” follows features a meaty midsection of quiet chills and shocking suspense. Effective overall, yet very much made for mature tastes, “Speak No Evil” isn’t for teens looking for Friday night frights or average audiences expecting a jump-scare screamer. This is a movie meant for mulling over the consequences of becoming a lemming to social mores, and the danger that comes from handing over control of your identity for no better reason than being afraid to rock a boat headed toward intensely rough seas.
Review Score: 65
At least the movie only runs 70 minutes, though I suppose that extra 10 technically disqualifies it from being a literal amateur hour.