How James McAvoy Once Again Called on His Beastly Instincts for Speak No Evil

You thought Kevin Wendell Crumb died at the end of Glass? Nah, he simply moved to Europe and changed his name to "Paddy."

Okay, maybe that's stretching the truth just a smidge, but there's no denying actor James McAvoy gives off some serious Split vibes in the trailers for the Blumhouse-produced reimagining of Speak No Evil (hitting theaters everywhere next month via Universal Pictures).

It's an apt comparison, considering how the X-Men franchise alumnus called on the same primal instincts for the tense psychological thriller, which centers around a vacationing family of three who make the mistake of placing their trust in the wrong people.

James McAvoy Teases "Bestial" Character Work in Speak No Evil

Paddy (James McAvoy) appears in Speak No Evil (2024). Photo: Jay Maidment/Universal Pictures

In the film, Paddy starts off as a seemingly normal dude. He's kind, charming, and claims to be a physician. This carefully-crafted facade is meant to lure the Dalton family — Louise (Mackenzie Davis), Ben (Scoot McNairy), and 11-year-old Agnes (Alex West Lefler)  — to a remote, countryside villa where the real "fun" begins. Paddy, as it turns out, is more Jack Torrance than Danny Tanner.

"I tried to keep him as soft as possible for the beginning of the film when we’re on holiday, trying to take the edge off the fact that this is clearly a bad guy coming in here,” McAvoy told Entertainment Weekly during an interview at San Diego Comic-Con last month. “And then by the end of the movie, doing all that classic s--t that actors do — eating slightly less carbs, pumpin’ up before each take, you know, all that kind of stuff when he’s meant to be malevolent and more bestial and animalistic."

“We also stripped him down,” added writer/director James Watkins, touching on the conscientiousness behind the costume design. “The layers are literally coming off with him. And as James says, he starts off in softer costumes, and then he’s stripping back, and you’re absolutely revealing more the animal within as the movie goes, so it sort of charts it."

James McAvoy and director James Watkins appear on the set of Speak No Evil (2024). Photo: Susie Allnutt/Universal Pictures

As for why the team felt it was necessary to reimagine the acclaimed Danish feature upon which Speak No Evil is based, McAvoy compared the films to different interpretations of famous Shakespeare plays. "You don't say, 'Why do we need to see Macbeth again? Why do we need two versions of Macbeth?'" he told Collider at SDCC. "We don't have two versions, we have thousands upon thousands upon thousands of versions of Macbeth. We don't do a remake of Macbeth. We just do Macbeth."

At the same time, having an English-speaking cast allowed the project to "dig into slightly different things" from a cultural standpoint, Watkins said.

"It digs into all the social anxieties and worries, but it kind of goes further, and it's a different experience," the filmmaker continued. "Christian [Tafdrup]'s film is a brilliant, brutal nihilist film, but this is much more of a roller-coaster ride. I think we've lent more into the humor, more into the thrills, but I think it's true to a lot of the themes. And then, in the third act, I think it takes it up another notch, and that's very deliberate. Hopefully, it's a really intelligent, fun, roller-coaster ride."