Current:Home > MyHow new 'Speak No Evil' switches up Danish original's bleak ending (spoilers!)-DB Wealth Institute B2 Expert Reviews
How new 'Speak No Evil' switches up Danish original's bleak ending (spoilers!)
View Date:2024-12-23 18:49:27
Spoiler alert! This story includes important plot points and the ending of “Speak No Evil” (in theaters now) so beware if you haven’t seen it.
The 2022 Danish horror movie “Speak No Evil” has one of the bleakest film endings in recent memory. The remake doesn’t tread that same path, however, and instead crafts a different fate for its charmingly sinister antagonist.
In writer/director James Watkins’ new film, Ben (Scoot McNairy) and Louise (Mackenzie Davis) are an American couple living in London with daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler) who meet new vacation friends on a trip to Italy. Brash but fun-loving Paddy (James McAvoy), alongside his wife Ciara (Aisling Franciosi) and mute son Ant (Dan Hough), invites them to his family’s place in the British countryside for a relaxing getaway.
Things go sideways almost as soon as the visitors arrive. Paddy seems nice, but there are red flags, too, like when he's needlessly cruel to his son. Louise wants to leave, but politeness keeps her family there. Ant tries to signal that something’s wrong, but because he doesn’t have a tongue, the boy can’t verbalize a warning. Instead, he’s able to pull Agnes aside and show her a photo album of families that Paddy’s brought there and then killed, which includes Ant’s own.
Paddy ultimately reveals his intentions, holding them hostage at gunpoint and forcing Ben and Louise to wire him money, but they break away and try to survive while Paddy and Ciara hunt them through the house. Ciara falls off a ladder, breaks her neck and dies, and Paddy is thwarted as well: Ant crushes his head by pounding him repeatedly with a large rock and then leaves with Ben, Louise and Agnes.
Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.
The movie charts much of the same territory as the original “Evil,” except for the finale: In the Danish movie, the visitors escape the country house but are stopped by the villains. The mom and dad are forced out of their car and into a ditch and stoned to death. And Agnes’ tongue is cut out before becoming the “daughter” for the bad guys as they search for another family to victimize.
McAvoy feels the redo is “definitely” a different experience, and the ending for Watkins’ film works best for that bunch of characters and narrative.
“The views and the attitudes and the actions of Patty are so toxic at times that I think if the film sided with him, if the film let him win, then it almost validates his views,” McAvoy explains. “The film has to judge him. And I'm not sure the original film had the same issue quite as strongly as this one does.”
Plus, he adds, “the original film wasn't something that 90% of cinema-going audiences went to see and they will not go and see. So what is the problem in bringing that story to a new audience?”
McAvoy admits he didn’t watch the first “Evil” before making the new one. (He also only made it through 45 seconds of the trailer.) “I wanted it to be my version of it,” says the Scottish actor, who watched the first movie after filming completed. “I really enjoyed it. But I was so glad that I wasn't aware of any of those things at the same time.”
He also has a perspective on remakes, influenced by years of classical theater.
“When I do ‘Macbeth,’ I don't do a remake of ‘Macbeth.’ I am remaking it for literally the ten-hundredth-thousandth time, but we don't call it a remake,” McAvoy says. “Of course there are people in that audience who have seen it before, but I'm doing it for the first time and I'm making it for people who I assume have never seen it before.
“So we don't remake anything, really. Whenever you make something again, you make it new.”
veryGood! (58798)
Related
- Mason Bates’ Met-bound opera ‘Kavalier & Clay’ based on Michael Chabon novel premieres in Indiana
- Irma Olguin: Why we should bring tech economies to underdog cities
- Tesla disables video games on center touch screens in moving cars
- Police document: 19-year-old Elizabeth Holmes reported sexual assault from Stanford
- Pistons' Tim Hardaway Jr. leaves in wheelchair after banging head on court
- Next Bachelorette Revealed: Find Out the Leading Lady From Zach Shallcross' Bachelor Season
- American woman arrested with 24-carat gold-plated gun in luggage at Australian airport
- TikTok sees a surge of misleading videos that claim to show the invasion of Ukraine
- Powell says Fed will likely cut rates cautiously given persistent inflation pressures
- Lindsay Lohan Is Pregnant, Expecting First Baby With Husband Bader Shammas
Ranking
- Shel Talmy, produced hits by The Who, The Kinks and other 1960s British bands, dead at 87
- A cyberattack in Albuquerque forces schools to cancel classes
- Panamanian tribe to be relocated from coastal island due to climate change: There's no other option
- Tyler Cameron Reveals He Only Had $200 in the Bank When He Dated Gigi Hadid
- 'Wanted' posters plastered around University of Rochester target Jewish faculty members
- TikTok sees a surge of misleading videos that claim to show the invasion of Ukraine
- Joe Rogan has responded to the protests against Spotify over his podcast
- Companies scramble to defend against newly discovered 'Log4j' digital flaw
Recommendation
-
Philadelphia mass transit users face fare hikes of more than 20% and possible service cuts
-
This Rare Glimpse Into Lindsay Lohan and Bader Shammas' Private Romance Is Totally Fetch
-
This Treasure Map Leads Straight to the Cast of The Goonies Then and Now
-
Happy Science Fiction Week, Earthlings!
-
Katherine Schwarzenegger Gives Birth, Welcomes Baby No. 3 With Chris Pratt
-
China approves coal power surge, risking climate disasters, Greenpeace says
-
Online betting companies are kicking off a Super Bowl ad blitz
-
Panamanian tribe to be relocated from coastal island due to climate change: There's no other option