Morten Burien and Sidsel Siem Koch appear in Speak No Evil by Christian Tafdrup, an official selection of the Midnight section at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Erik Molberg.
While on vacation, a Danish family befriends a Dutch family with a kid the same age as theirs. When the Dutch invite the Danes to their rural home, the passive aggressions accumulate to the point of extreme discomfort and terror. That’s the plot of Christian Tafdrup’s third feature Speak No Evil, which premiered this Saturday at the Sundance Film Festival. It was picked up by AMC’s Shudder, a horror-specific streaming service, on Friday.
Like many horror films of the recent era, Speak No Evil vilifies a certain societal behavior: in this case, it’s a culture that values politeness over personal comfort and safety. The Danish couple only agrees to go to their friends home believing it would be impolite to decline. When the Dutch couple serves roast boar for dinner, the Danes passively tolerate it rather than remind them of the wife’s vegetarianism. When they leave the kids with an unknown babysitter, the Danes decide the risk of complaining isn’t worth the social discomfort such assertiveness would cause. As these awkward interactions pile up, it becomes impossible to complain about such minor oddities without sounding rude and a little bit insane. As the Danish husband repeatedly says, they only must be there for a little longer.
Even though its cultural criticism is so hammered into the screenplay, it’s fun to watch the Danish couple squirm. Fedja van Huêt is the most entertaining to watch as the psychopathically cruel Dutch patriarch, whose eyes are full of conspiratorial malice even in his lighter offenses. Sidsel Siem Koch is similarly impressive as the Danish woman, who is caught between the culturally required politeness and maternal instinct to speak up for her daughter’s safety.
The Danish couple is plagued not only by social etiquette but also patriarchal gender roles. Louise (Koch) is frequently visibly uncomfortable and requests several times that they leave. It’s her husband, Bjørn (Morten Burian), who feels a stronger need to stay and keep up the polite image. Louise is visibly more connected to her daughter than her Dutch counterpart Karin (Karina Smulders) is to her son, and that seems to disturb Louise while her husband doesn’t notice. The film implies that the family would have been safer had Louise been in charge, with her fight-or-flight instinct compared to Bjørn’s egoism. Had this aspect of the film been fleshed out more, perhaps I’d be a bit more positive on the whole thing. Though it gave the film a glimmer of nuance, it felt like almost an unintentional afterthought in the face of its more obvious cultural criticisms.
Standing on its own, Speak No Evil is a solid film that entertainingly critiques one of the more arbitrary rules of our society. However, in dialogue with other horror films of the era, it fails to stand out from the crowd mainly because it lacks nuance in its message. It feels like Tafdrup is getting on his knees, begging us to just be assertive for once. That method works, in my view, only when the cultural issue is more urgent and dangerous than annoying politeness. Even films like Parasite and Get Out, which put, respectively, class and racial conflict in their crosshairs, do so with thoughtful nuance. Speak No Evil, on the other hand, lacks both the nuance and cultural stakes to be as successful.
Of course, Parasite and Get Out set the bar too high. That said, I would argue that the greatest horror films of today have either such cultural stakes told with nuance or unique artistry (think any one of A24’s recent horror entries). Speak No Evil, unfortunately, falls short in both categories. Though it has a few moments of cool cinematography, nothing about it stands out on a visual level.
In all, Speak No Evil is a neatly packaged film that fails to do anything overly revolutionary. It feels as though 85 of its 98 minute runtime is exposition and rising action, and its climactic twist is predictable though it bears the dramatic impact of a Greek tragedy. Because of this structure, though, it was decently entertaining in the way that any horror blockbuster might be. Unfortunately, the Tafdrup brothers’ screenplay is too clunky and heavy-handed to make it the intellectual horror it thinks it is, and it isn’t scary enough to be considered a solid run-of-the-mill horror film. I wouldn’t call it a great film, and I’m not sure I would call it good. It is squarely in the realm of the three-star “decent” movie.
Speak No Evil had its World Premiere in the Midnight section of Sundance Film Festival 2022.
Director: Christian Tafdrup
Writer: Christian Tafdrup and Mads Tafdrup
Rated: NR
Runtime: 98m
Rating: 3 out of 5
Emmy is a big fan of all things TV and movies. Among her current favorites are The Matrix, Midsommar, Titane, and Fleabag. Catch her on Letterboxd @ewenstrup !
