Speak No Evil review: No less stark, satirical or unsettling than the original

Released only two-and-a-half years earlier, the first version underperformed at the international box office, earning just $630,000 (a fraction of its $3 million budget), but its reputation continues to grow among film fans belatedly discovering it via streaming platforms, due in no small part to its audacious and shocking last act.

Respectful of what’s gone before, Watkins admirably keeps his powder dry, never rushing the slow-burn atmosphere of a narrative that starts out resembling a standard middle-class comedy of manners before gradually morphing into something altogether more sinister.

Strait-laced American couple Ben (Scoot McNairy) and Louise (Mackenzie Davis) are on holiday with their young daughter when they meet a mirror-image English family of three, the clear alpha being the father, Paddy (James McAvoy).

All is lovely and rich in Kodak moments, to the point where Ben happily accepts Paddy’s invitation to join him, his wife Ciara (Aisling Franciosi) and mute son for an extended stay at their West Country cottage.

Once there, cracks begin to appear, seemingly innocuous at first (Ciara admonishing her guests’ daughter for chewing with her mouth open), but friction over social niceties proves to mask more trigger-happy personality flash-points in Paddy’s treatment of his own child.

Ben’s default-setting aversion to confrontation isn’t shared by his wife, who wants to pack up and leave, but although it becomes increasingly evident that Paddy isn’t playing with a full deck, he’s charismatic enough to persuade the visitors to stay put a little while longer.

That’s as much of the plot as you’ll read about here, because one the film’s strengths is the manner in which Watkins expertly unpeels his onion of awkwardness and niggling sense that something worse is just around the corner - a trick he similarly pulled off as director of the standout Black Mirror instalment Shut Up and Dance.

McAvoy is superb throughout; now in his mid-40s, the actor nonetheless retains a modicum of the boyishness from his early career - all the better for wrong-footing the other characters when darker internal demons come to the fore.

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The shifts from charm personified to nasty piece of work recall the multiple personalities he played in Split, but whereas M Night Shyamalan’s 2016 thriller was sometime cartoonish in its execution, Speak No Evil’s McAvoy is coldly, unrelentingly malevolent.

Having said that, there is an audience-surprising sprinkle of humour that was missing from the film’s elder Danish sibling, not least when Paddy emotes maniacally to The Bangles hit Eternal Flame - hilarious and horrifying in equal measure.

The forcefulness of the performance (aligned to the fact it’s his face alone on the ads and posters) risks suggesting this is primarily The James McAvoy Show, but praise is also due to the actors playing the wives.

Davis strikes a chord as the de facto moral conscience, appalled by her hosts and desperate to escape their clutches, while Franciosi skilfully makes Ciara much more difficult to read; is she just as caught in Paddy’s trap, or somehow complicit in her husband’s behaviour?

All will be revealed in time, further into a cinematic journey that, like its nearest recent neighbour, Jordan Peele’s Get Out, nods to horror conventions while stretching the genre’s canvas in elegant, thought-provoking directions.

Speak No Evil is showing in cinemas from Thursday 12th September 2024.

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