Speak No Evil Review: With friends like these, who needs friends?
James McAvoy and Mackenzie Davis star in a psychological thriller that more resembles a crummy holiday weekend.
Making new friends is hard enough for most folks hitting middle age, even more so when they're scarcely holding together the calamities that have become their lives. So excuse the initial trepidation Ben Dalton (Scoot McNairy) and his wife Louise (Mackenzie Davis) feel when they experience a casual meet-cute with Paddy (James McAvoy) and Ciara (Aisling Franciosi) during their much-needed Italian getaway. New friends require a level of emotional freedom that Ben and Louise just don't have at the moment.
In fact, as we come to find out, the Daltons have been going through a rough patch in their marriage — she's agreed to move the family to London to support his new job, which he has subsequently lost, and uh-oh, she's been texting with another man. The unhappiness in the posh Dalton household has been so tense their twelve-year-old daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler) can scarcely go five minutes without clutching her cherished plush bunny. Putting it delicately, things are tense. So when they collide with Paddy and Ciara, the couple's earthy appeal is liberating. Ben and Louise are charmed by their new friends and, for a time, so are we.
The better parts of James Watkins' Speak No Evil take place when the two households agree to another luxury weekend at Paddy and Ciara's remote farm, where they make boozy cider, hunt game (something Louise, a pescatarian, chafes at), and pick wild mushrooms during extended hikes through their unbelievably gorgeous estate. In one regard, Watkins is lucky in his casting. As a sinister foil, McAvoy's a killer, all glittering blue eyes and roguish charm. How he can crack that lupine grin of his to suggest all manner of disquieting things is uncanny. Through loaded glances and shifting expressions, we gather his character is hungry for friendship — maybe a little more than that when it comes to Louise. What does Ciara think about this? That's a bit more complicated.
Complicating matters further is Paddy and Ciara's boy, Ant (Dan Hough), a silent fellow who shows all the signs of alarming familial abuse. Paddy says Ant has a rare condition that makes him quiet. Later, Ant shows Ben what's really happening behind that sullen frown.
There has been bad juju at the Paddy/Celine family farm well before the Daltons showed up, that much is clear. When Paddy's in his cups, he gets rough with Ant in full view of Ben, Louise, and Agnes, which makes you wonder what goes down when folks aren't looking. Ciara's mothering of Agnes crosses a few lines, too. A little too late into the weekend, Louise's misgivings about this family come to the fore. Meanwhile, Ben feels inspired to find his inner cowboy. And thus the Dalton's many problems rear their heads like a hydra lying in wait.
So what's going on here? Are these people just pretentious show-offs or swingers? Is there actually something ominous at play here? More to the point, are we watching a psychological sex thriller, or a movie about six people having a shitty weekend? I'm not happy to report that the second half of Watkins' film is a real stinker. Of course something’s up, but getting to the inevitable showdown takes forever to crack, and the confrontation isn’t some cathartic, cider-infused blow-out but a clumsy action sequence that pops off like Yuppie Home Alone. This shift in tone is catastrophic, not just for the hostile vibes that have been at a simmer for the first hour or so but for the performances, too. Watkins' situation, Straw Dogs via Blumhouse, requires his minor ensemble to shift from miserable people to frantic savages in a grudge match, and not everyone's up to the job.
McNairy and Davis aren't the problem — check out their work on Halt and Catch Fire for sturdy evidence of their dramatic chops. Davis held her own in Terminator: Dark Fate, for what it's worth. But Speak No Evil demands adrenaline in its final half-hour that neither actor can convincingly sustain. And still, their performances aren’t what keeps the film from being effective or even good. Watkins, who tinkered with similarly uncomfortable material with his debut Eden Lake, has yet to master that elusive art of building (or even establishing) suspense.
His latest is being touted as a psychological thriller. Don't believe it. A psychological thriller of this stripe requires a person's life choices to be used against them, the calculated derailment of a normal life that results in chaos, perhaps violence. In this regard, Paddy and Celine are incompetent antagonists. In a better movie, they'd exploit the rifts between Ben and Louise to rip their marriage apart before moving in for the kill. Watkins insinuates that this is the case; one character suggests that Paddy is like a cat playing with his food. But the game Paddy's playing with the Daltons is less "cat and mouse" than a kid enjoying his new toys. When it's time to put them away, Paddy throws a fit.
Speak No Evil has the superficial components of a psychological thriller, but Watkins fumbles them. There's a scene that appears far too late in the movie where Ben and Louise finally have it out in a release of their mutual frustrations over this crummy weekend. They discuss Louise's emotional betrayal over hushed, harsh whispers, and their argument shows us that Ben has been emasculated by it. In a subtle use of framing, we see a shadow through the stained glass of their bedroom door, and we know someone else has been listening in. We keep waiting for Paddy or Celine to use this touchy information to fray an already unraveling situation, but Watkins keeps it in his back pocket for the moment when Paddy and Celine's hideous behavior has finally sent the Daltons packing. By then, I'd already checked out, too.
4.5 / 10
Speak No Evil is in wide release now.
Written and directed by James Watkins.
Cinematography by Tim Maurice-Jones.
Starring James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis, Aisling Franciosi, Scoot McNairy, Alix West Lefler, and Dan Hough.
Produced by Jason Blum and Paul Ritchie.
Rated R for tedious rudeness, suggested sexuality, and stock violence.