Speak No Evil: Director of Original Danish Version Reveals Origin of the Psychological Thriller

If Speak No Evil has a moral it's this: Never hang out with vacation friends outside of the vacation itself. You never know if the charming strangers you just met abroad are actually psychos in disguise.

The upcoming film centers around the Daltons — Louise (Mackenzie Davis), Ben (Scott McNairy), and their 11-year-old daughter, Agnes (Alix West Lefler) — who are conned into visiting the charismatic (yet truly beastly) Paddy (James McAvoy), his wife Ciara (Aisling Franciosi), and their mute son Ant (Dan Hough) for a weekend holiday. As the weekend progresses, the Daltons realize their hosts aren't quite right, but due to implicit social norms, they can't just walk away.

With the Hollywood remake of Speak No Evil just two weeks away from hitting theaters, Universal Pictures and Blumhouse have debuted a brand-new featurette detailing the origins of the 2022 Danish film upon which the new version is based. According to director Christian Tafdrup, who co-wrote the original with his brother Mads, the core concept began with a real family getaway in another country.

Here's where the idea for Speak No Evil originally came from

"We met a Dutch family in Italy and they invited us to visit them," he remembers in the video above. Most wisely, the Tafdrups did not accept the invitation, but Christian began to imagine "what would have happened and I thought it could be a pretty scary film." 

Written and directed by Eden Lake and McMafia alumnus James Watkins, the new film also opens with a fateful meeting in Italy, though it swaps the nationalities of the main characters, trading Denmark and Holland for America and the United Kingdom.

"It was interesting to push into some new areas," Watkins says of his approach to the material. He adds more context in the production notes, stating: “I wanted the film to feel real and natural, not a genre confection. As inspirations, [DP Tim Maurice-Jones] and I talked a lot about Fargo and Jaws, how both created believable and tangible worlds and used raw, naturalistic light and minimal-yet- strategic artificial light."

Paddy (James McAvoy) appears in Speak No Evil (2024).

The movie is rated R for "some strong violence, language, some sexual content and brief drug use," per FilmRatings. Jason Blum and Paul Ritchie produced the movie, with Beatriz Sequeira, Jacob Jarek (producer of the original), and Tafdrup serving as executive producers.