As a big fan of James McAvoy I was a little shocked to learn he had a new movie out in theaters now. I mean you’d think that they would have done any marketing at all but they just didn’t. There isn’t even a trailer for this film, so I would not be surprised if this review is the first you’ve ever heard of Speak No Evil. But being the huge McAvoyeur that I am, as soon as I walked into my local cinema and saw this poster I immediately bought a ticket and let me tell you, this was not the movie that I expected.
This movie is called Speak No Evil and yet it was full of dialogue. Just non stop conversations the whole way. Not only are they speaking but McAvoy in particular is very often speaking in quite a sinister, some may even say evil manner. They should have called the movie Speak Lots of Evil because that’s what happens the entire 1hr50 runtime. I kept waiting for there to come a point when something would happen that would cause all the speaking to stop but it never did. In fact they spoke more as the film went on and it got more evil. Just a completely flabbergasting film to watch.
According to my post viewing research, this is a remake of a Danish film that’s also called Speak No Evil which came out just 2 years ago. Now I’m sure this film is at least better than the original since everyone knows that Hollywood films are always better than foreign films. But I was curious to see if the Danish one also bamboozled the audience by featuring copious amounts of speaking and it turns out it did. So I guess this is a faithful remake but what’s the point of remaking a subtitled foreign film if you are not going to improve upon it the way every Hollywood remake has done.
So overall I cannot recommend this film. It’s simply too frustrating to watch and it completely destroys any trust with the audience. If you’re a die hard McAvoyeur like I am you may get something out of this because he is delightful here as a gracious host who is increasingly pushed to his limit by annoying and ungrateful house guests. But that’s all this film has going for it. When I go to a film called Speak No Evil, I don’t expect much but the bare minimum is that there should be no speaking and certainly no evil speaking and this film is almost nothing but that. I feel betrayed as a viewer.
Speak No Evil: ★☆☆☆☆
