Speak No Evil: James McAvoy stars in movie trailer
Warning – this article contains spoilers for Speak No Evil.
Speak No Evil director James Watkins has opened up about his reasoning behind the biggest changes made to the original Danish thriller in his 2024 remake.
The Woman in Black filmmaker spoke exclusively to Express.co.uk ahead of the film’s release this weekend, which is sure to rally a huge horror crowd.
James McAvoy stars as enigmatic Brit Paddy, who, along with his wife Ciara (played by Aisling Franciosi) invites American couple Louise (Mackenzie Davis) and Ben Dalton (Scoot McNairy) to visit their idyllic home in the countryside when they meet each other on holiday.
After a series of awkward culture clashes, their stay soon takes a dark turn when they realise Paddy and Ciara aren’t who they seem.
While the original follows a Danish couple who stay with a Dutch couple, director James explained the most “interesting” option for his Hollywood remake would be to set it in the UK.
Speak No Evil director explains the remake’s biggest changes (Image: BLUMHOUSE)
“For many reasons,” he said. “I don’t think in the UK film business we’re great at setting stories in the UK, like mainstream thrillers or whatever.
“The Americans are brilliant at mythologising their whole landscape and we’re not. So I’ve tried to do that in my career. But it was more than that. It was character-based and thematic.
“I said to them, ‘If you want to do a version of this film that’s set in America and it’s a New York metropolitan couple go to West Virginia’, I don’t know how to write that. It’s going to be rote, it’s going to be received, it’s going to be second-hand.”
British audiences, who often hold their politeness in high regard, might be surprised that, instead, the film centres on an awkward American couple who are taken aback by the brash and overbearing Paddy and Ciara.
Speak No Evil is based on a 2022 Danish thriller of the same name (Image: NORDISK FILM)
However, James explained: “I know people like Paddy. If I can make it in the UK I can lean into recognisable things and in that specificity, I can hopefully make it more universal and speak to more people.
“I kind of wanted to have the American element because I thought that would, like with the original movie, feed the anxieties of social interaction and the horrors of social interaction. Propriety and how we self-centre.
“When they go to the farmhouse, is it a beautiful, ramshackle Hobbit house or is it just a bit grim and dirty? Is Paddy, with his twinkle and his smile and his humour, is it just kind of wacky, English eccentric humour or is he just, you know, a bit of a d**k?
“And it’s constantly playing those… the first 60 or so minutes of the movie are just playing that red light, green light.”
Like with the original film, directed by Christian Tafdrup, Speak No Evil 2024 undergoes a dramatic tonal shift in the third act, but one that will still keep viewers who have seen the 2022 version on their toes.
Paddy and Ciara are rather different to their counterparts in the 2022 original (Image: BLUMHOUSE)
“In terms of the third act, which is a very big thing in terms of the shift, I wanted these American characters – Christian’s movie is brilliant in terms of his characters,” the director said.
“I wanted my movie, with these American characters, and I went into this a lot with Scott and Mackenzie, there’s no way when the cat’s out the bag, and they’re at risk and their child’s at risk, that they wouldn’t at least try. It’s no longer about social propriety once someone pulls a gun on you.
“It’s a different rule. It’s not about subtext anymore. So I wanted to explore that in a different way, in terms of… most of us are very bad at interacting with violence because we’re not used to it. We’ve got away from it.
“I’m terrible – if someone gets violent on the tube I literally just try to get in the next carriage, and probably rightly. So I wanted to see, okay how do they interact with that as real people? They don’t suddenly become Navy SEALs. Ben’s notion of his masculinity is interrogated and shown to be not what he thinks it should be. And the alpha is actually Louise.
He then admitted: “American audiences would be screaming at the screen in a bad way if they didn’t at least try to do something. It’s just in their frontier mentality.”
James says audiences would be “screaming at the screen” if he didn’t make changes to Louise and Ben (Image: BLUMHOUSE)
James explained that James and Aisling came up with little character quirks while on set, such as finishing each other’s lines, to differentiate their couple from the original characters.
“But then very much in the third act we wanted a sense of, when she says ‘I’m a victim too’… is she complicit or is she a victim or can she be both?” he added. “And I think she probably can be both. Some of it’s a manipulation, but that doesn’t deny the fact that she was in some way groomed by Paddy.
“So just trying to create more colours and ambiguities to the characters. But she’s Paddy’s secret weapon.
“Paddy’s kind of larger than life and fun, the life and soul, but in terms of their con she’s a softening agent in terms of being warm-hearted and looks quite nice. She helps the seduction.”
The film has scored rave reviews so far and holds several gripping and gruelling surprises, even for movie buffs who think they already know what’s in store.
Speak No Evil is in cinemas now.
