This movie could save your life
People who gradually obliterate your boundaries can’t be trusted.
“Speak No Evil” with James McAvoy is available on streaming. It’s a 2024 remake of the 2022 Dutch-Danish film that carries the same name.
Even if you don’t really like watching psychological horror, I would really like you to bear with it, if you can. Especially if you have trouble standing up for yourself in awkward or simply strange situations.
When I saw the original, I took to TikTok to explain why it’s so good, if also absolutely horrifying:
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(You’ll have to excuse the way I sound in this video, I’m not much of a speaker haha)
The remake, in which James McAvoy absolutely steals the show with his seething energy, makes some crucial changes, but it’s still a very useful film to watch.
If you don’t want some very light spoilers, you can stop reading now.
In the interest of clarity, I will be focusing on the newer movie, directed by James Watkins.
So, the movie begins with a somewhat uptight, possibly troubled American couple on vacation with their daughter. They meet a gregarious and a bit off-kilter British couple who are staying at the same resort with their son. The son can’t speak. The British couple explain that he has a shorter than normal tongue, and thus suffers from a speech defect and some other issues.
The first act that the British man, Paddy (McAvoy), performs when casing our American couple (because that’s exactly what he’s doing, he is casing them, circling like a grinning shark), is taking a lounge chair away from them at the pool, even though this lounge chair is obviously occupied. Later on, he makes an innocent crack about it, like, “Oh, I’m the one who stole your lounge chair.”
What our villain Paddy is doing here is very important: 1) He tests a boundary, and sees that it is permeable. 2) He then puts the intended victim at ease. He’s joking. Laughing. He’s admitting that this was, perhaps, rude of him! This is supposed to generate a sense of complacency.
The bulk of the movie revolves around this increasingly disturbing push and pull dynamic.
Paddy and his wife Ciara (played by the perfect Aisling Franciosi as a teasing little bohemian, product of the British care system, in love with organic eggs now) invite the American couple and their daughter for another vacation at their isolated Devon farm.
By now, we all know that something is off in the Americans’ marriage. The lack of balance and trust between mom Louise and dad Ben is reflected in how they helicopter-parent daughter Agnes, who is in middle school but still has an emotional support stuffed animal she takes everywhere (the fact that the kid is anxious because her parents are brimming with anxiety themselves is not stated, but obvious).
When these nervy Americans get to rural Devon, they become the perfect sitting ducks. They want to be good guests, so they pretend to not notice that Paddy is practically force-feeding the vegetarian Louise meat, or that they get stuck with the bill for a very expensive dinner, or that conversations with their hosts are getting increasingly hostile.
The little indignities continue to mount and suggest a growing sense of menace. And there’s no limit to how menacing Paddy and Ciara can get.
As Agnes says by the time her parents FINALLY become aware of the horrifying game they are involved in, “We’ve been pretending it’s normal since we got here. This is so not normal.”
This is one of the movie’s most important lines. Nothing was OK about Paddy and Ciara from the start. PRETENDING that it was OK for the sake of politeness was a horrible mistake by Agnes’ parents.
Paddy spends much of his time playing up his status as a he-man, rubbing how masculine and virile he is in Ben’s face.
And as cruel as it sounds in the context of the film, psycho Paddy kind of has a point! Ben lost his job, he acts both ineffectual and frustrated, he lets Louise make all of the major decisions, and she is tired and resentful. So resentful, in fact, that she’s had another man sending her dick pics. She cheated (I think the dick pics on her phone qualify as cheating), and their intimate life is in shambles.
In modern terms, Ben’s a cuck. Paddy is disgusted with him. In fact, Paddy justifies everything that he is about to do to Ben’s family by suggesting that Ben is a weasel who just doesn’t love them enough to protect them.
Don’t get me wrong, Paddy is still a raving lunatic who deserves to be put down like a rabid dog. But at the same time, Ben is absolutely putting himself and his family in danger when he keeps accepting Paddy’s behavior and playing by his rules.
There’s a real battle of the archetypes going on here. Paddy the live-off-the-land hooligan and Ben the allegedly modern, sensitive, and kind of useless man. Paddy is still the sick villain, but, as the movie suggests, Ben needs to get it together.
Louise doesn’t get off the hook either; I don’t want to suggest that I approve of her cheating, or the way that she bosses Ben around, even though she doesn’t even like doing that. I think this movie is a good exploration of how upper-middle-class women can lose their sense of reality, indulging bad situations because they feel they are above them.
Still, it has to be said that Louise is a bigger badass than Ben. That can be a tough burden for any woman to carry in a marriage. We like to pretend that it isn’t, but it is. As I keep saying, over and over again, men are physically stronger than women. There’s no way around this, and I wish it wasn’t weirdly controversial with some people.
It’s crucial that Ben begins to understand that his wife is indeed kind of badass, and that he should be more like her; they learn to work as a team before this disturbing narrative is over, and Louise’s love for Ben allows for that to happen, as does his love for her.
The best horror movies are always about growth.
The remake is much less bleak than the original (honestly the original is a movie I would never watch again, even though it’s terrific). You can say it was tailored for an American audience. The final act of the boy without the tongue could imply that Paddy’s legacy will live on no matter what, but maybe that doesn’t have to be the case.
Maybe it’s just the one lesson that Paddy was meant to pass on - stand up for yourself. Stand up for those you love, or have loved.
“Speak No Evil” is a movie. I don’t want you to think you’re going to be fighting off sociopathic organic farmers from Devon in real life (at least, I hope to God this is never the case, especially because Devon is so nice). But the conversation it raises about boundaries is an important one.
“Boundaries” is the kind of word that’s been cheapened by whiny TikTok discourse.
You can even say it’s kind of a cuck word, probably part of Ben’s lexicon. Probably something Paddy would laugh about before he shoots you in the face or throws you in a pond.
But here’s the thing. Like it or not, we will all come across people who push us and push us into uncomfortable situations.
Here are some lessons offered by the movie, and extrapolated by me;
Try to not be alone with a stranger or near stranger who doesn’t seem respectful of you.
Someone wants to play off the disrespect as a joke? Hmmm. Be on your guard either way. One of the most manipulative and frankly dangerous people I’ve ever known would say something horrible and then go, “But where’s your sense of humor?” Yeah. No.
Worried about coming off as impolite to someone who you feel is crossing a line? Guess what, it’s not a deadly sin. Especially if you don’t really know this person.
Trust your instincts. Nature gave them to you for a reason.
Some people are like velociraptors in the OG “Jurassic Park.” Always testing the electric fences. Maybe that sounds mean, or whatever, but it’s true. If someone’s testing your electric fence, they’re looking to see what they can get away with.
Situational awareness is not the same as hypervigilance. Hypervigilance drains you over time. Situational awareness is a good skill to acquire and perfect over time.
Kids pick up on things. And kids are often a reflection of their parents’ behavior behind closed doors.
I hope you can find this movie as useful as I have. Stay safe out there, and remember, the glorious Normie Restoration will not abide by psychopathic jerks.