Looks like we have our contender for feel-bad movie of the year. Sorry if that counts as a spoiler, but I think it’s worth bringing up just so you can at least attempt to prepare yourself for what Danish filmmaker, Christian Tafdrup, and his co-writer, Mads Tafdrup, have concocted with Speak No Evil. It follows a Danish family, Bjørn (Morten Burian), his wife Louise (Sidsel Siem Koch), and young daughter, Agnes (Liva Forsberg), who get an invitation to visit a Dutch family who lives out in Holland that they had previously met on a family trip in Italy. Given how well they got along, the family decides to make the trip.
The Dutch family consists of Patrick (Fedja van Huêt), his wife Karin (Karina Smulders), and their young son Abel (Marius Damslev). At first, things are great, everyone is getting along well, even if some of the accommodations are not necessarily ideal – like a small uncomfortable mattress intended for Agnes placed in Abel’s room, or the cooking of meat for dinner despite Louise being vegetarian. However, as time continues to pass, things start to seem odd about the family that puts Bjørn and Louise off-guard, or perhaps it could just be a misunderstanding of cultural differences, or maybe something even more sinister.
Two filmmakers came to mind as I watched Speak No Evil, one was Ruben Östlund and the other is Michael Haneke. If anything about those comparisons is enough to sell you on the film, I’d recommend just checking it out since it will probably be your cup of tea. Tafdrup revels in the awkwardness of the situation, often playing it up for dark humor in the first half as Bjørn tries to be as accommodating as possible to their hosts. But as you would expect given how I opened this review, things take a very dark turn, and man…it’s effective.
It’s fascinating watching the events unfold, especially in how you experience it as a viewer, likely thinking in your head, “how would I react to this?” The film is all about how far we are willing to stay polite and forgiving, how far we are willing to take a misunderstanding or an uncomfortable situation. There are points throughout the film where the family has a fairly easy out, but they just keep coming back, and in ways that feel totally reasonable if this wasn’t something you were watching with the context of it being a horror/thriller.
How often do we have these situations after all? In our day to day lives? It’s probably more common than you think. You’re with someone, they could be a friend or a stranger, and they say or do something that might seem odd or perhaps a red flag out of context, but there’s that part of your brain that’s like, “well, maybe they didn’t mean it that way,” “maybe I’m just overthinking it,” “well, I don’t wanna cause any tension by bringing it up,” etc. These scenarios will probably not lead to anything in our lives, at least it’s very unlikely, but that’s a different story here. That politeness, and willingness to push through an uncomfortable situation when you could easily just leave ultimately leads the story to a rather disturbing finale.
And that’s about all I wanna get into regarding Speak No Evil, I feel like I’m already giving too much away, but there are plenty of surprising moments that are worth experiencing in this film when you go into it knowing very little. The actors all do a wonderful job, Burian and Koch in particular do a great job at balancing that realistic awkwardness you have with people when you’re not sure how to react to something. If you couldn’t buy into their performances, this wouldn’t work. They hold it together, and of course Huêt and Smulders are relishing the role of a couple holding a potentially dark secret. Considering this is his first foray into horror (at least, based on a quick look at his IMDb page), I’m pleasantly surprised by just how piercing and gut-wrenching Christian Tafdrup managed to make this climax feel, and he pulls it off because the work was put in to get you invested early on. Obviously, movies like this will not be for everyone, so if you’re in the mood to feel absolutely miserable, this is one that will do the trick.
Speak No Evil is now out in select theaters. It will begin streaming exclusively on Shudder on September 15th.