Bjørn (Morten Burian) and Louise (Sidsel Siem Koch) are on vacation with their young daughter, Agnes (Liva Forsberg). There, they meet a similarly structured family: Patrick (Fedja van Huêt), his wife Karin (Karina Smulders), and their shy young son Abel (Marius Damslev). Sometime after the vacation has ended, Bjørn and Louise receive an invitation to reunite for the weekend with their Dutch friends. When they arrive, the Danes endure a perverse form of hospitality until the strange encounters become too much to bear, and they plan to leave for home in the middle of the night. 

Speak No Evil, directed by Christian Tafdrup and co-written with his brother, Mads, received a buzzy premiere at Sundance before being picked up by Shudder. The psychological thriller is always dancing around the question of “what would you do?” as it leaves Bjørn and Lousie in a series of situations that grow in discomfort with each passing social faux pas. The Tafdrup brothers spin an uneasy web that blends the brutality for the sake of brutality found in Michael Haneke’s Funny Games (1997) with the conundrums of the Saw franchise, albeit more grounded and with fewer Rube Goldberg torture devices. The gravity of the situation is there throughout the final act and the onus is on the characters to decide their fate; fight, flee, or comply. 

The most exciting thing about Speak No Evil is how simple the concept is, even in the big reveal everything stays grounded. The film is a progression of awkward encounters that grow exponentially stranger and more invasive. At the end of it all, too, it is revealed that there is no greater cause or purpose to the events other than some people are truly evil. There are monstrous criminals out there who enact this violence for their own enjoyment, and Patrick and Karin’s motives here are simply to see how far they can take these interactions until someone breaks the unwritten rule of hospitality and says no to their host. 

The film does suffer a little bit in the execution of its thesis from an incredibly detailed production design. The senselessness of the violence which, unfortunately, matches our reality, is presented on screen quite well but there is so much intention put into the moments leading up to and finally exploding in the third act, that the film seems like it is trying to reach for something more than just that some people are bad. The title alone evokes some biblical – or at least religious – connotations, add to that the choral soundtrack, the eventual nakedness of the Danish family, and the Cherub which is displayed under the credit roll, the production design is clearly trying to make connections that the script either does not support enough to land or, more likely, is not interested in pursuing given what it does share about the sadistic Dutch couple. 

Speak No Evil also sets itself up to be a tragic allegory about remaining too long in abusive and manipulative relationships. This thought is completed much more so than the religious angle due to the strict nature of the narrative and how it ends. Patrick is so conniving and wily as he twists and skews every interaction he has with Bjørn and Louise to his nefarious advantage. What comes off at first as innocent mistakes, it quickly becomes apparent that these blunders have been carefully engineered to make the Danish family feel like bad guests if they speak up for themselves. In this way, the film is reminiscent of Darren Aronofsky’s mother! (2017), another film that focuses on abuse in a relationship and also does not quite stick the landing in regards to the religious imagery due to a lack of focus and clarity of the metaphor, and has a harrowing moment of gore that, while brief, will burn itself into the memory of audiences. 

Besides the simplicity of the concept, the film benefits from the lead performances of the two families. Burian and Koch capture the uneasiness of the situation perfectly as a couple that slowly begins to realize they have made a grave mistake in accepting Patrick and Karin’s invitation. By that same token, Huêt and Smulders work with such understated and unsuspecting menace that it really allows Speak No Evil to wash over audiences and leave them feeling dirty – violated, in a way – not because they are witnessing something that should not be seen like some occultist ritual that many-a film would fall back to, but rather that their own personal space and social boundaries have been chipped away at and crumbled, leaving them exposed. The Tafdrup’s are all too aware that this is the effect of the narrative because the only motive given to audiences is in a chilling line reading by Huêt when Patrick is asked why he is doing these terrible things. “Because you let me.” 

Speak No Evil does not wink at the audience, but it still plays with us like a cat with a mouse, not quite ready to land the finishing blow with its paw. From the safety of our couches, we do not have any real narrative control, unlike Patrick who could have fought back, but for those who will decry the upsetting images of the final act, the remote was just an arm’s reach away to allow them to back out at any time. That is not to lessen the sadistic tragedy that unfolds across the 97-minute runtime of the film, but it does put the responsibility back onto the audience to draw that line in the sand and stand up for themselves. Those who power through their discomfort will be rewarded with a look into an incredibly bleak cycle of violence, analytically is unsustainable and impractical, but in the world of the film, it teaches us to keep our guard up when our gut tells us that something is not right, like a perverse fable.