Filmmaker Christian Tafdrup isn’t thrilled with the remake’s “happy” ending.
Directed by James Watkins and in theaters now, Speak No Evil is a remake of a 2022 Danish film of the same name from filmmaker Christian Tafdrup and while audience and critical response to Watkins’ film has been largely positive, Tafdrup isn’t among those singing its praises. Speaking with the Danish radio show Kulturen (via World of Reel), the Danish filmmaker was critical of how the American version of the story gave Speak No Evil a “happy ending” and posited that the need for the good guys winning was something deeply rooted in American culture.
“When I saw the film yesterday, I could see that they would never succeed with a film where the characters are stoned to death, as they do in our film,” Tafdrup said. “These people [in the U.S. version] must fight for their family and defeat the bad guys … It is a kind of happy ending, and it is so deep in their culture that America must be able to hand it all.”
For reference for those who may be unfamiliar with the Danish version of Speak No Evil, in that film a Danish couple are invited by a Dutch couple to their country home for a weekend holiday, but it turns out that the Dutch couple are serial killers whose pattern is to target families so that they can murder them and abduct their children, then start the process over again. The film ends with the Danish couple, Bjørn and Louise stoned to death by the Dutch husband, Patrick and Bjørn and Louise’s daughter, Agnes now mute because her tongue has been cut out as she’s used to help Patrick and Karin target another family.
The American version has a far less bleak ending Ben and Louise (the counterpart to the Danish couple) making a last stand against Paddy and Ciara (the counterpart to the Dutch couple) which sees Louise kill Ciara and Ant, the child that Paddy and Ciara had been using in their scheme, bashing in Paddy’s face with a rock after Agnes disables Paddy by injecting him with a syringe of ketamine that he’d previously tried to use on her. In the end, the family along with Ant drive away, having survived and defeated the murderers. The two films have starkly different endings and for Tafdrup, it was something that he noticed when watching audience reactions. Tafdrup said that he saw audiences leaving the remake “who were completely over-enthusiastic and clapped, laughed, and whooped. It was like being at a rock concert” and compared it to reactions to his film in which “people… left my film traumatized.”
When it comes to the changes to the film, however, Watkins has previously addressed them, noting that differences in cultural perspectives were behind the choices.
“There’ll be people that see the original movie and go, ‘Why hasn’t he remade that movie? Why hasn’t he made this incredibly punchy, unrelenting ending?'” Watkins explained to SFX magazine, per GamesRadar. “But I would argue, with my characters and their journey, I’m following through their journey in terms of agency and how they would react. What I’ve taken from Christian’s film is the satire, the exploration of the social rules, and how we react.”
Speak No Evil, starring Mackenzie Davis, Scoot McNairy, James McAvoy, and Aisling Franciosi, is in theaters now.
