A tragedy of Manners
'Speak No Evil' is the perfect horror movie for the current moment
Before we go any further, let’s get this out of the way. 'Speak No Evil' is an exceptional horror film, inching ahead of ‘Babarian’ to be the best since ‘Hereditary’, I think. While I don’t think I’ll be watching it again, it does the job it sets out to do so masterfully that I won’t have to. I’ll never forget it. Having your nervous system fed through a mangle is not something from which you can easily walk away.
It concerns Bjørn (Morten Burian) and Louise (Sidsel Siem Koch), a couple from Denmark, who are invited by Patrick (Fedja van Huêt) and Karin (Karina Smulders), a Dutch couple, to their country house for a weekend retreat. From the moment they arrive, probably about fifteen minutes into the film, there is hardly a scene where your entire body is not jangling with alarm.
Early on, Patrick offers Louise, who is vegetarian, a slice of wild boar. “I insist” he says, until she finally relents and takes a bite. It’s the first indication that Patrick is a man who enjoys testing and flouting boundaries. His behaviour is just ambiguous enough that the persistent micro-violations are hard to read. Is he just an eccentric? Is it a cultural problem? Louise and Bjorn have been conditioned to think the best of everyone, and while something about their marriage suggests they do need some sort of change, their fatal mistake is believing they could find it in the company of their host.
(There are major spoilers ahead, but if you decide to watch the film before you read this, be warned, it is a brutal experience, especially if you’re a parent.)