On the one hand, I’d really rather not harbor a stereotypical notion about a place, any place, or its people. But then come movies like James Watkins’ Speak No Evil. Now, I don’t even blame it for being generic and uninspired as hell. Plenty of American thrillers like that out there. What I do hold against Watkins’ watered-down remake of the disturbing Danish original is simply the fact that all of the director’s efforts have gone into making it as digestible as possible for the American audience. And I really can’t say if it’s the audience’s fault for perpetuating this process of an art form softening its edges or the artist’s fault for expecting so little from their target audience. What I do know is that it’s about time filmmakers stopped contributing to this gradual decline of complex emotions in films just for the sake of making them more appealing to the masses. It really shouldn’t be the case that the first time I heard about James Watkins’ daring attempt to remake a film that’s undeniably bewildering and depressing, I figured it would have your usual “happy ending.” And boy do we have a ridiculously happy ending in our hands here.
Spoiler Alert
What Happens in the film?
In the first half, Watkins’ Speak No Evil follows its Danish source of “inspiration” word for word, anecdote for anecdote. New-to-London Americans, Ben and Louise experience just as much culture shock at their new place as they do on their Tuscany trip. Things start to look up on their Italian escapade with their daughter Agnes when their paths cross with an eccentric British couple and their disabled son. Paddy instantly wins Ben and Louise over with his heroic move of finding Agnes’ lost bunny, Hoppy. It’s not that Paddy’s red flags and lack of boundaries aren’t immediately obvious. Right off the bat, after merely exchanging names and general niceties, Paddy’s insistent on giving Agnes a ride on his scooter. And even when they’re out dining, all this guy does is bully the sweet Danish couple and talk smack about French people. The thing is, Ben and Louise actually enjoy Paddy, Ciara, and their son Ant’s company. So both of them are easily on board when it comes to doing the “nice” thing and saying yes to Paddy and Ciara’s invite for a stay at their English country house. But while Paddy and Ciara are certainly, um, interesting people to spend a couple hours with, Ben and Louise soon learn that staying with them at their house is probably not the best idea.
Why do Ben and Louise come back to Paddy and Ciara’s house?
Given Paddy’s a natural at imposing what he wants on everyone, including their guests, it doesn’t make for a very pleasant stay for Ben and Louise. He’s pretty good at tricking them into letting him have his way. He talks himself up by repeatedly mentioning what an honor it is for Ben and Louise to be served his prized goose, just so that he can guilt Louise, who’s a vegetarian (pescatarian, to be exact), into having a bite. Paddy and Ciara also make their guests extremely uncomfortable at their buddy Mike’s restaurant by acting out one of their racy roleplay bits right at the table. Ben doesn’t seem to be taking it too well, and he even takes a stand when Paddy rough handles Ant for not playing with Agnes. But then again, Ben picks his battles pretty timidly and often lets things slide. Like the time they’re practically forced to go for a dip in a lake that looks dangerously deep, the time when Paddy washes his hands of the bill at the restaurant, when Paddy and Ciara catch them off guard with the babysitter, and even when the neck-massage Paddy gives to Louise looks dangerously close to sexual-assault. The only thing that gets Ben and Louise running out the door is finding their daughter in bed with barely-clothed strangers. And even then, their luck runs out as Agnes has forgotten her emotional support toy at Paddy’s place. The sight of Agnes vigorously scratching her arms red is enough to tell us that she has some sort of anxiety issues, and that Hoppy’s the only thing that calms her down. So Ben’s actually out of options when he decides to drive back and falls into an ugly confrontation. What’s the couple to say when Ciara makes up a lie about a dead daughter to justify her questionable protectiveness toward Agnes? So they stay on.
How does Agnes find out the truth about Paddy and Ciara?
Agnes is a pretty smart kid. And given there are pitfalls to being emotionally intelligent, I think the reason she suffers from anxiety is her parents’ strained relationship. At the end of an uncomfortable night, when Ben and Louise get into an emotionally charged argument, we get to know that Louise’s been unfaithful, and that Ben’s pain about that manifests itself in unhealthy ways. No matter how hard parents try to guard their kids from their issues, kids always know something’s up. But the good thing about Agnes’ intelligence is that it makes her the kind of friend that someone as tortured as Ant needed. Every chance Ant gets, he tries to communicate the scary truth about their circumstances to Agnes. He shows her an engraved watch in Paddy’s suspiciously big and varied collection, tries and fails to put something down in a note that’d be comprehensible for Agnes, and even opens his mouth to Ben to show him that Paddy’s lied about his congenital disease. There shouldn’t be any doubt about what kind of a man and a parent Paddy is when he bullies his kid for not dancing right. So at this point, Ben and Louise are just waiting for something to feel like a deal-breaker. And it’s a deal-breaker, alright! Ant’s led Agnes down a creepy basement to lay the scary truth bare. From what he shows Agnes, it looks like Paddy and Ciara have been playing a nasty game for a long time with a whole range of different couples. They woo couples with their charm and steal their belongings and their kids. In the picture where Ant’s with his real parents, he’s making a goofy face that shows his tongue. That effectively means that Paddy and Ciara are the kind of psychos who’ve chopped his tongue off to keep their future victims from learning the truth too early. And the kids being switched in the pictures also suggest that they’re planning to steal Agnes.
Are Paddy and Ciara dead?
If it isn’t obvious already, Ben and Louise aren’t really free to leave. But they truly get to know the extent of the danger they’re in when Agnes lets her parents in on Paddy and Ciara’s frightening secret. Agnes is smart enough to come up with a plan that’ll explain why they want to leave right away. She fakes having her first period, and that makes it all the more natural for her to look so unnerved. But Paddy’s not gonna let them slip away so easy. He’s created a risky hurdle for Ben by placing Hoppy on a high ledge and giving him a ladder. Assuming he expected Ben to fail, this was likely his way of showing him how much manlier he is for having retrieved Hoppy for Agnes back in Tuscany. He doesn’t stop at that. Having overheard their fight the other night, Paddy pushes Ben and Louise to come out and tell the truth that they hide from each other. Louise makes use of this opportunity by being assertive and saying that their marriage has probably run its course. Paddy’s got to be a little taken aback by this sudden show of boldness. So I think throwing Ant into the lake so Ben and Louise would stay was a move made out of frustration and desperation.
Ben and Louise aren’t the kind of people who’d let a kid die just to save their hides. But their kindness costs them when they’re tied up at the barn, being held at gunpoint by Ciara and transferring money into Paddy’s account. Paddy’s obviously not a doctor, at least not a practicing one. Intimidating their hostages and pocketing their money is how they’ve been able to keep up their lifestyle. But they’ve clearly messed with the wrong people here. Earlier, Louise snuck a box cutter into her pocket. Before Paddy can drug her daughter with Ketamine, Louise gets the jump on him, giving Ben, Agnes, and Ant the window to get themselves to safety. It’s a good thing that they don’t take their chances making a run for it and lock themselves up in Paddy’s house instead, where they at least have access to things they can mount a proper defense with. But Paddy and Ciara aren’t the only ones posing a danger to them. Turns out, Mike, the poacher/chef at the restaurant they dined at, is in on this whole game. After a lengthy “Home Alone-esque” ordeal which ends with Louise killing Mike and scalding Paddy with sulfuric acid, they make their way to the opening through the roof. Ciara’s too shocked and messed up to think straight. So the problem sorts itself out when she makes a wrong move and takes a fatal fall.
In Speak No Evil’s ending, the coast isn’t clear for Ben, Louise, and the kids. Paddy’s surface-level injury isn’t enough to hold him down. When he grabs hold of Agnes and goes on a rant, there’s a lot to read between the lines. Throughout the film, Paddy’s come off as a creep. But what truly spoke to his disgusting nature was how elated he was about Agnes getting her first period. There was also that uncomfortable scene where he basically demanded “love” from Ant. And no matter how involved in this psychotic game Ciara has always been, we can’t just dismiss the fact that she claimed to have been his first victim. We may not know how old Ciara and Paddy really are, but Ciara sure looked a lot younger than her husband. So it’s really not a stretch to wonder if Ciara wasn’t one of the young girls who got caught in Paddy’s web of manipulation. After all, Paddy does say that it’s Agnes’ turn to replace Ciara. So without spelling it out too much, he can’t be seeing Agnes as a daughter figure. But weak is the last thing that Agnes is. She actually kept that Ketamine syringe on herself just in case the need arose.
In the ending sequence of Speak No Evil, Agnes saves the day by drugging and incapacitating Paddy. Ben and Louise likely planned to leave him like that and call the cops. But they’re not the only ones whom Paddy has hurt. So before they can all drive away from this horror show, Ant gets revenge for the deaths of his parents and the years of abuse by crushing Paddy’s head with a brick. All this time, Ant’s been trying to warn Agnes about the risk that Paddy posed because he didn’t want Agnes to end up in the position he was in. And by killing Paddy, Ant actually makes sure that he can’t ever go around hurting people and innocent kids just because he’s crazy enough to believe that “they allowed him to.” As for Ben and Louise, I think this experience will certainly be a crucial factor in their future decisions. Their takeaway from this might just be that life’s too short to be in a relationship that doesn’t make either of them happy. Or, now that they’ve gotten proof of their love and dedication to one another and to their daughter, they might also take it as a sign to give their marriage another shot. Either way, at least Agnes now knows that her parents will take on even the craziest of people to protect her. There’s nothing that Ben and Louise won’t do for her. That knowledge will hopefully make for a better life than the one that Agnes has been living so far–one where she needed to rely on a toy for comfort. Maybe that’s why she hands Hoppy over to Ant. He needs him now more than she does.