SILENT KILLERS

THE DIRECTOR OF HOLLYWOOD'S SPEAK NO EVIL REMAKE ON HORROR, COMEDY AND JAMES MCAVOY

- JACK SHEPHERD

THERE'S NO POINT REMAKING A MOVIE that works on its own." No, that's not a quote from an angry YouTuber complaining about how Hollywood has run out of ideas, which is why it's remaking the exquisitely tense Dutch horror Speak No Evil. Instead, those are the words of James Watkins, the writer and director behind the upcoming American retread. "[Director] Christian [Tafdrup]'s film works brilliantly," Watkins says. "It's incredibly uncompromising in following through its thesis to its end. There's just no point remaking it. I thought, 'Well, I can have a conversation with that movie."

The original Speak No Evil's premise is devilishly simple: a happy Danish family go on holiday in Tuscany, where they are befriended by another family. Once back home, the Danes accept an invitation to the other family's house in the remote Dutch countryside, only to gradually realise that these people are not who they seem. It’s a tension-filled, slow-burn horror that examines how so many of us are afraid to break normal social cues, to the point where we can end up suffering unnecessarily just to stay polite. Tafdrup’s film, though, takes this to a more deadly extreme.

Watkins transposes the action to the English countryside. An unhappily married American couple – played by Mackenzie Davis and Scoot McNairy – along with their daughter, Alix West Lefler’s Agnes, visit their mysterious, charming new friends from Gloucestershire, portrayed with charismatic, bone-chilling excellence by James McAvoy and Aisling Franciosi. They, too, have a child in Dan Hough’s Ant, though he can’t speak because his tongue didn’t grow properly when he was born.

Horror studio Blumhouse is behind the remake and had been searching for the right filmmaker to take on the project when executive producer Couper Samuelson approached Watkins about the idea, having enjoyed his bleak 2008 horror Eden Lake, starring Kelly Reilly and Michael Fassbender.