by Stephan A. Russell
The American actor talks re-teaming with Halt and Catch Fire star Mackenzie Davis for a new spin on dark thriller Speak No Evil.
There’s a tendency to sneer at movie remakes offhand, with some wondering why Danish filmmaker Christian Tafdrup’s fantastically bleak psychological thriller Speak No Evil has been reborn as an English-language chiller a mere two years after its 2022 debut.
But there’s an unofficial get-out-of-jail card for the horror genre, which has delivered a raft of equally impressive, if not more so, reanimations of also-brilliant films. Think David Cronenberg’s foray with The Fly, John Carpenter’s closer-to-the-novella cut on The Thing, and Luca Guadagnino’s delving into the darkness of Dario Argento’s Suspiria.
Speak No Evil re-do star Scoot McNairy says there’s one critical thing that he’s looking for from a go-again in general and when considering signing on to this film in particular. “If you’re going to remake something, I’m hopeful they’ve done something different, because otherwise, if the film or the song was so great, why are we touching it?”
The Woman in Black director James Watkins, together with Tafdrup and his co-writing brother Mads, have twisted this macabre story about tourists who befriend the wrong folks while on holiday in Italy and reluctantly agree to a catch-up that goes horribly awry, into something altogether different.
As soon as McNairy read their script, he sought out the original. “I was chomping at the bit to see it, and I loved it so much and thought it was incredible,” he says. “But I knew that James Watkins would be putting his fingerprints all over it, and as soon as you bring in a new cast, it’s a whole other thing.”
McNairy has been reunited with his Halt and Catch Fire co-star Mackenzie Davis as an American couple based in London, Ben and Louise. They’re trying to chill on holiday with their bunny teddy-clutching anxious daughter Agnes (Riverdale actor Alix West Lefler) when they run into boisterous couple Paddy and Ciara. Played by Split lead James McAvoy and The Nightingale breakout Aisling Franciosi, there’s a troubling dynamic between them and their son Ant (Dan Hough), who was born without a tongue.
Speak No Evil’s artfully aggravated tension rises almost immediately, with Ben and Louise passive-aggressively sniping at one another even before their kinda snobby hackles rise at Paddy and Ciara. “I love those themes, in the original, of the uncomfortability of politeness and how far we take that,” McNairy says. “I wanted to play that.”
Ben finds himself both repulsed by and strangely drawn to Paddy’s alpha male antics. “I hadn’t really explored that before, where I’m playing a character in a movie who’s trying to be like another character in that movie,” McNairy says. “Paddy’s coming from the other end of the spectrum, where he’s boisterous and strong and masculine and here’s this guy Ben, who’s feeling vulnerable and weak. So, what happens when you mesh these two together?”
The bond already built with Mackenzie made it easier to poke at Ben and Louise’s fractious dynamic. “We had chemistry and she’s perfect for this role, so I wasn’t as nervous,” McNairy says. “She did an exceptional job at coming in and pulling off that role, and it’s a hard one to play. Altogether, they’re great ingredients for a pot of soup. When you put it all in there and stir it around, you’ve got something controversial.”
Filmed between Croatia and Gloucester in the UK, McNairy says the isolation of the regional shoot in the latter destination, where Paddy and Ciara’s eerie farmhouse is located, made it all the easier to get into weirded-out mode when Ben and Louise show up and personal boundaries begin to fall over.
“We’re out in the middle of nowhere and the drive in looked very Hitchcockian, I have to say, and there was this house you pass along the way that looks like Dracula’s,” McNairy laughs. “When I first saw it, I was like, ‘Isn’t the house a little on the nose?’ And they’re like, ‘That’s not the house, keep going.’ But the locations, the art department and set design all lent itself to that isolated feeling.”
Since his big breakthrough as a photojournalist in Gareth Edward’s haunting alien invasion movie Monsters, McNairy has racked up a string of films that dance on the dark side of life, like Andrew Dominik’s mob movie Killing Them Softly, Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave and David Michôd’s dystopia The Rover. Does the devilish detail appeal?
“I do have a massive fascination with the darker things in life because it’s something that’s not as familiar to me,” he says. “I’m a happy, light-hearted guy, but I definitely lean into this stuff artistically because it’s the unknown.”
Watkins was a grand companion, diving into the known but new spin on Speak No Evil. “He’s done an incredible job with this movie, of toeing that line of uncomfortability and then pushing it,” McNairy says. “And that’s the talent that James has. He’s done an exceptional job and he’s incredibly lovely to work with and be around, too. He takes the ending and turns it into an action film when it totally goes sideways into a horrific nightmare.”
Speak No Evil is in Australian cinemas from 12 September 2024
