PREMISE
A family is invited to spend a whole weekend in a lonely home in the countryside, but as the weekend progresses, they realize that a dark side lies within the family who invited them.
THE GOOD STUFF
McAvoy- James McAvoy is one of the very best actors in the game right now. In the last fifteen years or so, he has proven to have such a wide range he can effectively play any character you throw at him, and I do mean any. He’s played evil before in its most extreme form (GLASS and SPLIT), and from what someone can get from the trailers, it seems that he’s playing that form of evil here as well, but he is not.
What he is playing is a maniacally unhinged douchebag of the higher order. A man who seems charming at first but is such a habitual line stepper that he quickly becomes aggressively reprehensible. McAvoy is so fun, and he’s fun all the time. Especially in this movie.
MACKENZIE DAVIS- This film’s real anchor is Davis’s performance. She is the low-key main character of this film and the audience’s voice for all of the appalling stuff surrounding her. She does a lot of heavy lifting in this and the other movies/shows she’s in. She’s seriously underrated.
DAN HOUGH – I don’t know how Blumhouse keeps doing it, but they always tend to find these wonderful child actors to be in their films. Movies like INSIDIOUS, THE BLACK PHONE, M3GAN, OCULUS, THE VISIT, US, and others always find at least one extraordinary child performance. That is no exception here. Hough is very compelling from minute one and carries every scene that he’s in. It’s really impressive.
THE BAD STUFF
There is no bad stuff here. When it comes to writing these reviews, the bad stuff is reserved for things that could have been redeemed with a slight tweak here and there. Redeemable things that just missed the mark. There is no bad stuff here in this film…….but there is some ugly stuff. Absolutely irredeemable things that are not only annoying but insult the intelligence of the audience.
THE UGLY STUFF
EPIC TOMFOOLERY – Back when I reviewed ALIEN ROMULUS, I pointed out how many times the characters ignored advice that would have saved their lives and did so out of genuine stubbornness. I walked out of that theater thinking that I would not see a horror movie for the rest of the year that would even remotely compete with what I just saw. Until now. I speak with no hyperbole in saying this, but the characters played by Scoot McNary, Mackenzie Davis, and Alix Lefler are the most inexplicably unintelligent horror movie characters that have existed since the old-school camp Crystal Lake teenagers of the 1980s.
The plot of this movie is that a husband and wife choose to TAKE THEIR CHILD with them to a remote, isolated villa to stay with very eccentric STRANGERS that they’ve only known for NOT EVEN HALF OF A DAY and stay there for MULTIPLE DAYS ON END for zero reason should tell you the levels of absolutely unrealistic intelligence that these characters are operating on from the jump. And it only gets outrageously worse from there. So many WTFs.
The problem is that this movie takes itself very seriously. There are heavy dramatic elements throughout. And given the unquantifiable amounts of bull**** decision-making by the characters we are supposed to be rooting for, there was a lot of unintentional laughter in the theater, which I saw when the movie was trying to be serious. The way this movie is laid out, it probably would have served better as an Edgar Wright psychological horror comedy.
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I don’t know if I agree with the sentiment that Blumhouse has been on this losing streak for the last year and a half, as many people are quick to say. They’ve always been hit or miss. SPEAK NO EVIL is one of the better ones to come along since THE BLACK PHONE. I recommend seeing it. However, make sure your thinking cap is completely removed before going.
SPEAK NO EVIL is in theaters now.
