Review: ‘Speak No Evil’ Tries to Parlay Misbegotten Violence for Profound Subversion
When on holiday in Italy, a Danish family — Bjorn, Louise, and daughter Agnes — meet a similarly structured Dutch family — Patrick, Karin, and son Abel. They make small talk and get along well, so well that they exchange contact information that leads to Patrick and Karin extending Bjorn and Louise an invitation to come visit them. To the invited guests, it seems a tad precarious, but what is there to doubt when you believe the best in people? Bjorn, Louise and Agnes accept their offer and visit the Dutch family for a weekend, but while interactions seem amicable at first, it doesn’t take long for the host family’s quirks to start raising concerns.
For the first two thirds of Speak No Evil, the film walks a nimble line of precarious unease as audiences decipher Patrick and Karin’s actions. Patrick will make forceful proclamations about how Dutch cheese is being discredited by the world. Later, Patrick and Karin will demean their child through what they perceive as tough parenting. Bjorn and Louise concede at first for the sake of being gracious guests, but they start to interject when lines are crossed. The unsettling proximity of awkward and psychotic behavior forces them to ask whether Patrick and Karin are simply eccentric individuals or if there is something more menacing to them.
When the film answers this question, Speak No Evil rapidly careens towards an immoral ending that’s cruel without cause. To get to the heart of what I find problematic about this, I’ll need to go into some mild spoilers, so advert your eyes now if you wish to spare yourself. Essentially, the film proposes that if you “let” bad things happen to you, they will happen — Patrick makes this clear in no confusing terms when asked why he’s acting this way towards his guests. If you look past the unsettling imagery in the final fifteen minutes of the film, and retrace how you arrived there, you’ll start to realize these bleak images provide no thematic revelation to what came before. It toes interest with the lengths to which you will protect your family and the belief (or lack thereof) of moral good in this world, but it settles for outcome that is exists purely for shock value. It is extreme violence without a lesson, and I can’t recommend something that tries to parlay such misbegotten sadism as profound subversion.
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