‘Speak No Evil’ Review: James McAvoy Is in Top Sinister Form in a Slow-Burn Blumhouse Thriller That Almost Works

James McAvoy plays another deranged villain in Speak No Evil, which isn’t a bad thing. He’s very good at it. This one, though, is quite different from his multiple-personality character in M. Night Shyamalan’s Split and Glass. Here he is Paddy, a doctor turned gentleman farmer whose charm and wit cloak … well, what he’s hiding is the central question in this thriller about an American couple, Ben (Scoot McNairy) and Louise (Mackenzie Davis) living in London, who accept an invitation for a weekend at the farmhouse of Paddy and his wife, Ciara (Aisling Franciosi).

The film’s slow-burn pace is an asset, not a flaw. Speak No Evil works best when it focuses on the Americans’ escalating fears, and collapses near the end when the psychological horror story turns into a predictable potboiler. But for a good three-quarters of the way, this Blumhouse production is an entertainingly elevated genre piece.

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James Watkins, who previously directed Eden Lake and The Woman in Black, has a sure hand as he keeps turning up the tension in the movie, based on the 2022 Danish thriller Gaesterne. He begins with glorious views of Italy, where Ben and Louise are vacationing with their 11-year-old daughter, Agnes (Alix West Lefler), an anxious child attached to Hoppy, the stuffed rabbit she calls her “worry bunny.”

At their resort, they meet Paddy, Ciara and their son, Ant (Dan Hough). Paddy explains that Ant can’t speak because he was born with a malformed tongue. McAvoy modulates the performance so that Paddy is engaging, funny and just a little bit too eager to be friends. He is the kind of guy who can genially spar with Louise about the fact that she is a vegetarian without turning the conversation into an argument.

When back in London, they are surprised to get Paddy’s weekend invitation, and Louise, always skeptical of him, resists. Ben wants to accept, and argues that the two couples’ kids, both in need of friends, get along great, so why not? Throughout, the push and pull between Ben and Louise makes Speak No Evil more than a guessing game about what terrible thing might happen. Davis deftly convinces us that Louise tries not to be a downer, which explains why she often goes along with things that make her uncomfortable. Ben has moved the family to London for a job he was quickly downsized out of, and he’s pretty needy. He is also befuddled for far too long, choosing to believe what he wants to see rather than what’s under his nose. But both McNairy and Davis keep their characters grounded long after the screenplay falls apart.

The farmhouse itself is perfectly shabby-chic, with production design that makes it look slightly mysterious (stained glass windows on the bedroom doors) but not particularly haunted. It is so isolated, of course, that there is no cell service. Rhetorical question: Was there ever a landline phone in a horror movie that did not have the line cut later? Watkins doesn’t indulge in or call attention to those tropes, though, as he leads us to question the enigma of Paddy and wonder how long it will take Ben and Louise to come to their senses and bolt.

Paddy’s games begin almost the minute the guests arrive, when he insists that Louise have the first bite of the prize lamb he has killed and cooked, as if that whole vegetarianism conversation never happened. He bullies, but with a smile. McAvoy ramps up the creepiness gradually. In one scene he brings real danger to his recitation of Philip Larkin’s poem “This Be the Verse,” with its famous line about how families mess you up, a clue to a lot that goes wrong. The film comes to seem like a low-rent mix of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with its guest-baiting, and The Shining, with McAvoy hinting at a Nicholson-like mad gleam in his eye, as we wait for a violent “Here’s Johnny!” moment.

Franciosi (The Nightingale) makes Ciara’s character slippery, as she is meant to be. Lefler is thoroughly convincing as Agnes, who is often shrewder than her parents. And as Ant, Hough (who in real life does not have his character’s disability) does a remarkable job of expressing himself without words, especially when it’s time for Ant to reveal some family secrets.

Unfortunately, the story takes far too many predictable turns. It has a “get out of the house” phase, then a “really, don’t go back in that farmhouse” moment, until it finally reaches, “I give up, these people are hopeless.” The climactic action standoff between good and evil, with knives and guns drawn, is actually anticlimactic, although you have to admire Louise’s ingenuity in turning household cleaning products into weapons. And all the actors are so game, straight through to the end, that they almost make up for this final silliness.