by Jason Adams
I don't know why people never heed the wise words of the credits to The Real World opening credits when they find themselves inside a horror movie of manners, but if we all could just stop being so damned polite and start getting real there'd be way fewer corpses dumped into the ditches of the world, and doesn't that sound a lot nicer for everybody? But no, nobody listens to the reality-programming Cassandras called Bunim and Murray, and so we end up watching people like the Danish family at the heart of Christian Tafdrup's pitch-black Sundance horror Speak No Evil, who don't speak up for themselves and pay the darkest of prices for it. Get real, world! It's for your own good...
We first meet Bjorn (Morten Burian), Louise (Sidsel Siem Koch), and little Agnes (Liva Forsberg) on holiday in a picturesque corner of Italy, where they are having an acceptable time. Decent enough, you might say. It's Italy, of course it's beautiful, but the love affair between these three doesn't exactly pop off the screen. Dad snaps at slight provocations, and takes any excuse to wander off by himself. You get the feeling that what they need to be vacationing from is one another...
Then one day at their hotel pool they meet another family -- Patrick (Fedja van Huêt), Karin (Karina Smulders), and little Abel (Marius Damslev) are visiting from Holland and they come across as just the family that our Danish friends are straining and failing to be. Boisterous, fun, embracing the spirit of the place -- Bjorn especially can't help but look on with awe and admiration (and, one immediately senses, maybe a little bit something else, wink wink) at papa Patrick, who seems the sort of father that one is supposed to be. They drink, they enjoy each other's company, and Italy suddenly comes to life in a way it hadn't been.
Some time later Bjorn & Co have gone home to Denmark and quickly sunk back into their boring routines, when out of the blue arrives a postcard -- a tossed-off invite from Karin to come visit Holland for a weekend is suddenly made official. Louise brushes it off like the strange offer it is, but you can see Bjorn's brain glomming onto the thought right outta the gate. He's into it, and watching this unfold with my gay eyes (yes, I have very gay eyes) it was impossible not to read between the lines that he has his unspoken reasons for wanting to go stay at the home of a handsome, charming, overly friendly man he barely knows. The gay reading is there for those looking, and becomes moreso as the movie plows along. It's baked right into the eventual tragedy of the thing.
Because yes, Speak No Evil gets dark -- so dark you can hardly stand it eventually. Off Bjorn drags his reluctant wife and daughter to the middle of nowhere to spend several days with people they barely know for god knows what reason, and they almost immediately regret the entire thing. Any semblance of goodwill dissipates within hours of arrival -- Patrick's big humor transferred out of the vacation context and into their small run-down home becomes too big, too loud, and Karin's friendliness sneaks towards insidiousness instead. The microaggressions begin heaping up, smothering the air out of the place, until none of them can barely breathe, and that's only the start of it.
As somebody who grew up in an abusive home the heaviness to the last half of Speak No Evil rang terrifyingly true to me. Tafdrup expertly mines the mounting helplessness of the situation; the way your best intentions can be weaponized and turned against you, each one torn off and plunked down in front of every exit, cutting off escape before you're even sure that's what you should've been looking out for. The sense of impending doom is claustrophobic, traumatizing -- this is a dark sit, a hard watch, and for those who're into that sort of thing a valorous entry in the Feel-Bad Hall of Fame. Funny Games would never.
Speak No Evil is playing in the Midnight section of Sundance. It will stream on Shudder in the US at a later date.