“Speak No Evil” is a throwback to the era of mid-budget thrillers from the 80s and 90s, such as “The Hand that Rocks the Cradle,” “Unlawful Entry” and “Fatal Attraction,” in which representatives of supposedly respectable bourgeois society were threatened by dangerous outsiders who smelled weakness in them and/or wanted to punish them for their sins, perceived or real.

Written and directed by James Watkins (“The Woman in Black”), an adaptation of a much bleaker Danish original of the same name, it’s a fun crowd-pleaser, best seen on a Friday or Saturday night in a packed theater where shouting “Get out of there, you idiot!” at the screen is not only tolerated but expected. The film might also be of interest to therapists who tell their patients to listen to the inner voice telling them to leave an abusive relationship and not be talked into staying. There are plenty of teachable moments here, some involving homemade weapons.

The main characters are a family from the United States who have moved to London for professional and personal reasons, but have fallen on hard times. Husband Ben Dalton (Scoot McNairy), wife Louise Dalton (Mackenzie Davis) and high school daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler) are further traumatized by a family betrayal, the details of which are eventually revealed once the Daltons have put themselves in a pressure cooker situation.

That would be the unexpected and insinuating arrival of another family, consisting of a forty-something doctor father named Paddy (James McAvoy), his much younger Eastern European wife Ciara (Aisling Franciosi), and their son Ant (Dan Hough), who is about Agnes’s age but cannot speak clearly due to what Paddy describes as a birth defect of the tongue. The families meet on holiday in Italy and bond enough for Paddy to invite the Daltons to his spacious but slightly dilapidated old house in the countryside a few hours outside London. They would, allegedly, hang out and enjoy home-cooked meals and go swimming in the local pond and walk in the woods and do a lot of other things that sound like fun until you learn that your hosts are terrifyingly deranged, which happens sooner than you might expect.

It’s here that the audience’s tolerance for stupid behavior will begin to fluctuate and manifest itself in booing and jeering. There are plenty of points in the film where the Daltons could conceivably be watching for some social transgression, whether it’s Paddy insisting that avowed vegetarian Louise take a bite of slow-roasted goose or Ciara pretending to go at him at the table for shock value, yelling, “Oh my god, look at the time!” and getting as far away from these people as possible. Part of the fun here, if that’s your cup of tea, is watching the Daltons convince themselves to either stay in a bad situation or return to it after they’ve left, each time digging themselves deeper into a hole that could eventually swallow them whole.

As mentioned, “Speak No Evil” is based on a 2022 Danish film by Christian and Mads Tafdrup. Not many people have seen it, but if you have, you might be annoyed by what was done to it. The result borders on those behind-the-scenes stories (often associated with the production of thrillers from the 80s and 90s, interestingly enough) where filmmakers would end a story in a perfect yet disturbing or even horrifying way, but test audiences would revolt and demand violent punishment for the bad guys, so a new ending would be shot and the film would make a ton of money and everyone would walk away feeling like they made the right decision because their bank accounts were lined. Fans of imported arthouse psychological horror films might even look at the original “Speak No Evil” and its remake and be reminded of a similar situation from over thirty years ago, when the masterfully bleak 1988 Dutch film “The Vanishing,” also known as “Spoorloos,” was remade by its own director for an American studio and given a much happier ending.

The original Speak No Evil was largely praised, and rightly so, but only made about a third of its budget at the box office, probably because it had one of those endings that made sense thematically but left you wanting to go straight home, crawl into bed, and stay there for two days. Watkins’ adaptation follows the original pretty closely, except for the ending, which is considerably longer and gives the Daltons a chance to solve the specific problems that have brought their family to the brink of ruin, and do so while fending off their hosts with guns, cleaning supplies, hammers, and the like.

Most thrillers of this type end with a small group of people fighting for their lives in a dark house. “Speak No Evil” embraces that cliché with gusto. Here too, you can appreciate it as a crowd pleaser. I laughed a lot with (and sometimes at) the film, especially when Watkins turned it into a reverse version of another English rural thriller, “Straw Dogs.” Davis’ intensely physical performance kicks into high gear in this section. She and McNairy have some wonderful nonverbal exchanges where the wife and husband look at each other, and you can intuit an entire hour’s worth of marriage counseling notes.

The performances are all great, bordering on flawless. It helps that three of the four leads (McAvoy, McNairy, and Davis) have played characters somewhat similar to this one before, if only in terms of plot functions; you know right away that you’re in good hands with these actors, and that they’ll find subtle colorings in a situation that you knew could only end one way.

McAvoy, in particular, makes a powerful impression. He’s slowly but surely become something of a movie star over the decades, and he brings his wicked but subtle charisma to the fore here, sometimes in a way that reminds viewers of an early Russell Crowe performance, where you weren’t immediately sure whether you were watching a wholesome guy who was a little rough around the edges but fundamentally decent or a monster. Paddy is both. His warmth, insecurity, extreme sensitivity to perceived disrespect, and ostentatiously acted displays of love for his wife and child seem absolutely genuine, but there’s always a lingering subtext that undermines any possibility that the film is excusing or glorifying him: the film knows that some of the worst people who ever lived love their families, or say they do. Davis and McNairy and, to a lesser extent, Franciosi (only because her character is relatively underdeveloped) function as supports and/or foils for McAvoy’s grinning, energetic character.

As for the film’s tendency to keep giving the Daltons a “way out” and then somehow having them end up back in that drafty old house while telling themselves they’re doing the right thing, well, that’s what happens in an abusive relationship, too. The structure of the film mimics that cycle. I don’t know if that’s enough to stop people from complaining that these people had a dozen chances to get out of there permanently and never took them; it didn’t really work for me, to be honest. But I think it’s a conscious choice on the film’s part, and it’s worth keeping in mind when arguing the pros and cons of doing so.

Check these out during opening weekend.