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    • James McAvoy horror deviates from original
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    James McAvoy horror deviates from original

    Vaseline Posted on

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    Spoiler alert! This story contains major plot points and the ending of “Speak No Evil” (in theaters now), so be warned if you haven’t seen the film yet.

    The 2022 Danish horror film “Speak No Evil” has one of the bleakest endings in recent memory. The remake, however, doesn’t follow the same path, instead creating a different fate for its charmingly sinister antagonist.

    In the new film from writer/director James Watkins, Ben (Scoot McNairy) and Louise (Mackenzie Davis) are an American couple living in London with daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler) who meet new holiday friends on a trip to Italy. The brash but cheerful Paddy (James McAvoy), along with his wife Ciara (Aisling Franciosi) and mute son Ant (Dan Hough), invites them to his family home in the British countryside for a relaxing getaway.

    Things go wrong once the visitors arrive. Paddy seems nice, but there are red flags, such as when he is unnecessarily cruel to his son. Louise wants to leave, but politeness keeps her family there. Ant tries to indicate that something is wrong, but because he has no tongue, the boy can’t give a verbal warning. Instead, he is able to pull Agnes aside and show her a photo album of families that Paddy has brought there and then murdered, including Ant’s own.

    Paddy eventually reveals his intentions, holds them hostage at gunpoint and forces Ben and Louise to wire him money, but they escape and try to survive as Paddy and Ciara chase them through the house. Ciara falls from a ladder, breaks her neck and dies, and Paddy is also thwarted: Ant crushes his head by repeatedly hitting him with a large rock, then leaves with Ben, Louise and Agnes.

    The film covers much of the same ground as the original “Evil,” except for the finale: in the Danish film, the visitors escape from the mansion, only to be stopped by the villains. The mother and father are forced from their car, thrown into a ditch, and stoned to death. And Agnes’ tongue is cut off before she becomes the “daughter” of the villains as they search for another family to victimize.

    McAvoy feels the reimagining is “absolutely” a different experience, and the ending of Watkins’ film best suits that group of characters and the story.

    “Patty’s views and attitudes and actions are so toxic at times that I think if the movie takes his side, if the movie lets him win, it almost validates his views,” McAvoy explains. “The movie has to judge him. And I’m not sure the original movie had the same problem that this one does.”

    Moreover, he adds, “the original film wasn’t something that 90 percent of the moviegoing public went to see and they’re not going to see. So what’s the problem with bringing that story to a new audience?”

    McAvoy admits he didn’t see the first “Evil” before making the new one. (He also only saw 45 seconds of the trailer.) “I wanted it to be my version of it,” says the Scottish actor, who watched the first film after filming was complete. “I really enjoyed it. But I was so glad I wasn’t aware of all those things at the same time.”

    He also has a vision on remakes, influenced by years of experience in classical theatre.

    “When I do ‘Macbeth,’ I’m not doing a remake of ‘Macbeth.’ I’m literally remaking it for the ten-hundred-thousandth time, but we’re not calling 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 doing it for people who I assume have never seen it before.

    “So we’re not actually remaking anything. When you remake something, you’re making it new.”

    Vaseline
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