Profile Pictures/Shudder
According to Speak No Evil, the lines between comfort and distress, order and chaos, and happiness and terror aren’t great—and, in fact, can be as narrow as the difference between adhering to and rejecting social conventions. Christian Tafdrup’s brutally discomfiting horror film (Sept. 9 in theaters; Sept. 15 on Shudder) navigates that uneasy space, detailing how slight deviations from the norm are often as harrowing as—and also precursors to—outright violence. Resonating as the satiric offspring of Force Majeure and The Vanishing, it’s a thriller that depicts the path to hell as paved with minor transgressions.
There’s nothing out of the ordinary about the Tuscan getaway enjoyed by Bjørn (Morten Burian), his wife Louise (Sidsel Siem Koch) and their daughter Agnes (Liva Forsberg), nor about the request by fellow vacationer Patrick (Fedja van Huêt) to borrow the poolside lounge chair that Bjørn is using for his clothes and towel. During their ensuing stay, Bjørn and Louise strike up a friendly rapport with Patrick and his wife Karin (Karina Smulders) and son Abel (Marius Damslev), whose quietness is a byproduct, they eventually learn, of a birth defect that’s left him with a shortened tongue. When this retreat concludes, Bjørn and his clan return to Denmark and Patrick and his head back to Holland, although a postcard from the latter to the former convinces Bjørn to visit Patrick at his home. While Bjørn’s motivation goes unspoken, snapshots of him staring out a window, his reflection duplicated and fuzzy, and looking uncomfortable at school performances and dinner parties, suggest that he views Patrick as an opportunity for a new life—a notion enhanced by Patrick’s flattering praise of Bjørn.
Speak No Evil’s initial passages are rather mundane but it’s hard to feel at ease when Sune Kølster’s score routinely and ominously crescendos over otherwise tranquil domestic scenes. Something sinister is lurking beneath these everyday surfaces, and Tafdrup’s compositions—full of characters disconnected in the frame and oppressively dwarfed by their surroundings—enhance the mood of menacing alienation. Still, the true nature of the film’s malevolence remains difficult to identify.