Speak No Evil may be a lot "less explicit" than the original horror movie, but it's still "horrific"

Stuck in the Middle with You by Stealers Wheel never sounded quite the same after Quentin Tarantino used it to accompany Michael Madsen’s ear-slicing torture of a tied-up policeman in Reservoir Dogs. Anybody who saw the David Fincher version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, meanwhile, may feel Enya’s Orinoco Flow was equally tainted when Stellan Skarsgård’s Martin Vanger used it to soundtrack his shackling and suffocating of Daniel Craig’s Mikael Blomkvist.

Thanks to James Watkins’ latest, we can now add another track to the list of innocuous earworms mischievously used to score moments of menace and violence: The Bangles’ 1989 chart-topper Eternal Flame. To reveal exactly how Susanna Hoffs’ dulcet tones feature in the Eden Lake director’s nail-biting remake of 2022 Danish thriller Gæsterne would be a spoiler too far. Suffice to say that, if Speak No Evil does its job properly, it won’t be ‘sun shines through the rain’ you’ll think of the next time you hear it.

Directed by Christian Tafdrup from a script he wrote with his brother Mads, Gæsterne – released abroad as Speak No Evil – told of a reserved couple from Denmark who are befriended by a couple from the Netherlands while on holiday in Italy. Invited to spend a weekend at their Dutch farmhouse, Bjørn and Louise (Morten Burian and Sidsel Siem Koch) warily accept only to discover that Patrick and Karin (Fedja van Huêt and Karina Smulders) are unconventional hosts with a secret agenda.

Premiering in January 2022 at the Sundance Film Festival, the film opened in Denmark that March and went on to be shortlisted for 11 Danish Film Awards. At some point along the way it caught the attention of Blumhouse’s Couper Samuelson, who wondered whether Watkins was the man to adapt it for an English-speaking audience.

"Couper was an early adopter of Eden Lake and we have a shared sensibility," says the English director, who scored a big hit in 2012 with Daniel Radcliffe-starring spookfest The Woman in Black. "He said, 'Take a look at this movie; it’s pretty brutal.' I watched it and thought I could have a really interesting conversation with Christian’s film. There was something interesting in it I could explore and develop on my own terms." Watkins agreed to sign on as writer and director, on the proviso the action be moved to England and that the Bjørn and Louise characters become American. "Usually it’s the Brits who are repressed and the Americans who are freewheeling, but that’s not always been my experience," he tells Total Film. "There were things in the film I could get my teeth into and make a little bit more my own."

Couple's retreat

Having worked with Blumhouse himself on Split and Glass, the second and third parts of M. Night Shyamalan’s Eastrail 177 trilogy, James McAvoy was just as happy to be the remake’s Patrick (now Paddy) and to head an ensemble rounded out by Mackenzie Davis (Terminator: Dark Fate), Scoot McNairy (Monsters) and Aisling Franciosi (The Nightingale). "I thought it was really fun and really fucking scary," he says of Watkins’ adaptation. (The Scottish star chose not to see the Danish original until the remake was completed.) "But it was also an examination of modern life and how we relate to rules, manners and compliance. The best stuff that Blumhouse does, the stuff of theirs I love, is usually underpinned by social or sociological commentary. So this film ticked all the boxes: it entertained, shocked and scared and it was about something as well."

When we first encounter Louise (Davis) and Ben (McNairy), they’re a couple in crisis. Stymied at work and miserable at home, the vacation they are taking with 11-year-old daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler) is a last-ditch attempt to salvage a relationship that has become, in McAvoy’s words, "an absolute pain in the arse". Small wonder, then, that Paddy and Ciara (Franciosi) are a breath of fresh air, even if they do come with a sullen young lad (Dan Hough’s Ant) who can’t speak a word. "Not only are they fun, but they seem to have it all figured out," McAvoy continues. "They’re really intelligent, they have been together for years and are clearly having great sex. They invite Ben and Louise to their beautiful home in the countryside and it seems like a dream, like they’ve been invited to Hobbiton. Who wouldn’t aspire to be like them, especially if you’re in a relationship that’s just getting by?"

"Ben is a guy who’s a bit lost, and he sees this guy who’s a bit unshackled," Watkins elaborates. "But there’s a cautionary tale here. I don’t need to mention any names, but when you look at the political world in America and the UK there are these demagogic figures who present themselves as against-the-system mentors who can solve all your problems. 'Follow me,' they say, 'and I’ll take you back to this untrammelled version of masculinity.' It’s a false, bullshit promise." In one sequence, Paddy takes Ben to the top of a hill and has him scream with him as loud as he can to expel his anxieties. It was not, says McAvoy, his favourite scene to shoot. "It was quite draining so I didn’t enjoy it," he tells Total Film. "As I get older’ – he is now 45 – "when there’s anything where I’m screaming, I’m always like, 'God, I’m going to be knackered after that!'"

"James is brilliant," gushes Watkins, who knew from his namesake’s British Independent Film Awards-winning performance in 2013’s Filth that he’d be able to embody Paddy’s many contradictions. "He understands the nuance, the push and pull, the play, the game. Paddy can’t just be boorish; he has to be charming and fun and twinkly and mercurial. James knew how to walk that line." That McAvoy had been working out and bulking up prior to being cast turned out to be fortuitous. "I had been eating a lot and lifting a lot of heavy weights so I happened to be a bit beefier," the actor explains. "I didn’t do it for the role but it worked out perfectly, timing-wise."

"He also had a slight hint of a mullet," laughs Watkins, who felt the much-derided hairstyle suited Paddy’s atavistic aesthetic. "Basically I went for something that was a little bit bogan," says McAvoy, referring to an Australian term for someone with low social status deemed uncultured and uncouth. "I wanted him to wear shorts a lot and look like a farmer. Even though Paddy’s a doctor, I wanted him to look like he had his hands in the soil every day. So we went for a kind of farmer chic, tinged with something modern and masculine that might be judged to be a little bit toxic."

The idea, says Watkins, was to offer a clear contrast with Davis and McNairy’s more buttoned-down characters, with Franciosi’s Ciara serving as the conduit between them. "James and Mackenzie are Alphas, Scoot is a bit more Beta, while Aisling is the secret weapon," the director reveals. "She’s the one who brings a sort of softening and heart to their subterfuge."

Original sin

As anyone who saw Tafdrup’s film will attest, the first Speak No Evil ended on a note of almost Funny Games-level bleakness. "Christian was really pushing the idea of how far people would comply, like an allegory almost," says McAvoy. "Our film is 100% a remake and it honors the original, but it also does something a little bit different." Our chat is venturing into spoiler territory, so best stop reading now if you want your Speak No Evil experience uncompromised. It’s not giving too much away, though, to observe that if the 2022 film echoed the works of Michael Haneke, the 2024 vintage isn’t afraid to throw in a few surprises of its own. "What I was quite minded to try and do is the gear shifts: the slow, incremental build so that one thing could become another," says Watkins. "It’s like, 'Jesus Christ' – you’re in this situation. Do you run, do you hide, or do you try and fight back?"

Another aspect of Tafdrup’s take that made it a tough watch for viewers was the way it depicted extreme violence against children. As much as Watkins admired the original, it wasn’t an element he wanted to replicate. "Our film is a lot less explicit," he says. "It’s a psychological thriller with a horrific concept embedded in it, rather than a straight horror film. It’s easy to get scares or shocks out of horrific actions. Since I’ve become a parent I guess I am more mindful of not just having clockwork horror." For his part, McAvoy was keen to ensure the young actor cast as his on-screen son would not wind up in any way traumatised. "I spoke with Dan and his parents and said, 'If this gets uncomfortable for you at any point, just say, ‘Stop’.' But Dan was up for the play; he understood what acting is and the line between reality and fiction."

Filmed in Croatia and Gloucestershire in summer last year, Speak No Evil was just five days away from completion when shooting was suspended by the SAG-AFTRA strike. (Lensing resumed in mid-November.) This, though, seems to have been the only bump in the road for an otherwise charmed production. "It came together incredibly quickly," nods Watkins, who is now busy writing another script. As for McAvoy, well, let’s just say those shorts came in handy. "We got to go to sunny Croatia and then film on a farm near Cheltenham in the middle of a sunny summer," he remembers. "It was gorgeous, a really nice shoot. I can’t complain at all…"

Speak No Evil is out in theaters on September 12. Read our Speak No Evil review here. For more scares, check out our guide to the best upcoming horror movies.

You can also read our interviews with James McAvoy about approaching the remake and how the director was inspired by The White Lotus.