Both the highest praise and the harshest criticism of Christian Tafdrup's horror film Speak No Evil is that the movie feels genuinely evil. While it doesn't present any harmful messages and isn't endorsing anything it's depicting, Speak No Evil taps into ideas so horrific that it makes viewers feel genuinely unclean after watching it. This intensity may warn some viewers away, but for a certain audience serves as a recommendation.
Running 97 minutes, the film takes its time to build up to the disturbing extremes of its last few minutes. For large chunks of its runtime, Speak No Evil is almost a comedy of manners. The set-up is that a Danish family and a Dutch family meet on vacation and initially seem to hit it off. The Dutch family invites the Danish family to visit their cabin in the woods for a vacation. Certainly, it would be rude to decline the invitation, wouldn't it? Many aspects of the Dutch family's behavior seem off, but the desire to be good guests overrules the instinct to either fight or leave these welcoming hosts.
Some of the red flags that signal the nature of the situation to the audience are comical plays on horror movie clichés, like the typical "cabin in the woods" setting and the over-the-top musical score by Sune Kølster. Others are more subtle. An intrusion in the bathroom doesn't play out like Psycho, but horror fans' memories of the Hitchcock classic only increase the discomfort of the situation onscreen.
More directly upsetting is how the host family treats their son, Abel. Viewers will start guessing about the reason for Speak No Evil's title when it's made clear Abel either can't or won't speak. First, his parents claim it's because he's shy; later, they claim it's because of a disability. Viewers have reason to be suspicious of a much darker reason for Abel's silence when they see how his father Patrick explodes at him in rage. The guests have their own child, a young daughter named Agnes, and keeping her safe without provoking the hosts becomes the biggest source of conflict.
98% of Speak No Evil contains no graphic on-screen violence. The psychological horror is built up so effectively that it arguably doesn't need any. When it finally gets bloody at the end, however, it's downright unbearable to watch. While the violent ending isn't as drawn-out as, say, the torture scene in Takashi Miike's infamous Audition, it's also contextually much more painful.
The most successful horror films typically involve some element of catharsis, no matter how twisted. There's no such catharsis to be found at the end of Speak No Evil. With a conclusion closer to Charles Perrault's version of "Little Red Riding Hood" than the more beloved version by the Brothers Grimm, it's expertly directed towards achieving its ends. Whether Speak No Evil's ending is something viewers will want to experience is another story.
See No Evil is streaming in the United States through the Seattle International Film Festival through April 24. The film will be released on Shudder later this year.