With the 2024 Hollywood remake of Speak No Evil now out it’s a timely reminder of the 2022 original film that’s been released on DVD where a Danish family visits a Dutch family they met on a holiday. What was supposed to be an idyllic weekend slowly starts unraveling as the Danes try to stay polite in the face of unpleasantness. Despite the two nationalities much of the film is in English making it easily accessible even for the most subtitle averse.
Running at only 90 minutes its well worth watching the two films back to back because though they are essentially the same story they both have their own notable differences. Arguably its director James Watkins remake that has the better first two acts, slowly racheting up the awkward moments with James McAvoy revelling in the nice and nasty often within a sentence. And Watkins script is more nuanced with back story and a better defined reveal as to what the ‘friendly’ couple are up to.
But the remakes third act is typically Hollywood not having the courage to have writer -director Christian Tafdrup original films ending. And what an ending it is. Extraordinarily bleak it stays with you for days and is more in keeping with the ‘friendly’ couples psyche and owes much to Michael Haneke’s ‘Funny Games;
1988’s The Vanishing was another such thriller with the most downbeat of endings that made it such an impact and its director George Sluzier went to Hollywood to remake his own film this time famously changing the ending to catastrophic effect instantly rendering the remake awful. The Speak No Evil remake didn’t make that mistake but its different ending is nowhere near as memorable as the original films. Like many of the best films with such downbeat ending (‘Seven’ being the best Hollywood thriller to be so bold) it’s what makes the journey worthwhile. And its for that reason that the Speak No Evil DVD is worth watching despite what is a vanilla release with only the film and its trailer on the disc.
related feature : Daisy Ridley talks about her new thriller, ‘Magpie’ with director Sam Yates, writer Tom Bateman & co-star Shazad Latif
related feature : Speak No Evil (2024) reviewed
We spoke to writer-director Christian Tafdrup about his original version of the film…..
Here’s the Speak No Evil DVD trailer…..
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