Speak No Evil (2022)
September 16, 2022 10:48 AM - Subscribe
A Danish family visits a Dutch family they met on a holiday.
What was supposed to be an idyllic weekend unravels quickly.
What was supposed to be an idyllic weekend unravels quickly.
Oh my god, this movie! So uncomfortable to watch. I saw it in the cinema in April so the feeling has numbed a little but I still vividly remember many scenes. As I recall, at least two thirds of the movie is "just" uncomfortable to watch because of norms and personal boundaries being pushed/broken - and the last part is more physically and visually horrific. The whole cinema was quiet for a long while when the credits rolled.
posted by rawrberry at 11:47 AM on September 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by rawrberry at 11:47 AM on September 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
Mod note: A couple deleted. Not sure about differences in when people were/are able to view this on Shudder, but probably not worth derailing the convo?
posted by taz (staff) at 1:16 AM on September 17, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by taz (staff) at 1:16 AM on September 17, 2022 [1 favorite]
A monument of a film. Never before has a film so succinctly chronicled the Dutch psyche.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 4:22 PM on September 21, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 4:22 PM on September 21, 2022 [3 favorites]
This movie is giving me an anxiety attack and we haven't even gotten to the horror yet.
Being trapped with awful people in a foreign location is a special kind of hell.
We were once in Sibiu, a gorgeous, medieval city that is a UNESCO World Heritage site. We went with a high school friend of Comrade Doll's and her American boyfriend. They kept skipping every site we went to visit to make out. The fucking guy called everything boring and kept complaining they didn't have a McDonald's.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 4:01 PM on September 27, 2022 [2 favorites]
Being trapped with awful people in a foreign location is a special kind of hell.
We were once in Sibiu, a gorgeous, medieval city that is a UNESCO World Heritage site. We went with a high school friend of Comrade Doll's and her American boyfriend. They kept skipping every site we went to visit to make out. The fucking guy called everything boring and kept complaining they didn't have a McDonald's.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 4:01 PM on September 27, 2022 [2 favorites]
JESUS CHRIST.
I'm a very family-oriented person and this was too much for me. I got through the ending by reading Wikipedia and fast forwarding.
God damn.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:05 AM on September 28, 2022
I'm a very family-oriented person and this was too much for me. I got through the ending by reading Wikipedia and fast forwarding.
God damn.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:05 AM on September 28, 2022
Fuck this movie. Super well-done but that was one of the most traumatic films I've ever had the misfortune of taking a chance on. It had some solid allegorical points to make but JFC I wish I could unsee it.
This was not campy/fun uncomfortable, this was a straight up a punishing thing to watch. JFC. Fuck this movie
posted by treepour at 11:15 PM on October 4, 2022
This was not campy/fun uncomfortable, this was a straight up a punishing thing to watch. JFC. Fuck this movie
posted by treepour at 11:15 PM on October 4, 2022
Found this quip on Rotten Tomatoes: "Like if Michael Haneke directed an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm."
That gave me a good guffaw and I'm feeling ever so slightly better now. Here's a link to the quoted review
posted by treepour at 11:44 PM on October 4, 2022 [5 favorites]
That gave me a good guffaw and I'm feeling ever so slightly better now. Here's a link to the quoted review
posted by treepour at 11:44 PM on October 4, 2022 [5 favorites]
I've got mixed feelings about this. The cringey "let's not offend our hosts" stuff is incredibly well-done and the acting is really good, but the last act's sudden turn didn't really do it for me, and I found the "ambiguously middle-eastern men are kidnapping white babies because we're all too polite to say anything about it" angle to be pretty problematic.
posted by whir at 9:33 AM on October 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by whir at 9:33 AM on October 11, 2022 [1 favorite]
I didn't take the Muhajid character as a racist trope, personally. For me, it played as someone incongruously outside of the "This is all just Dutch people stuff" line that Patrick and Karin were running in a way that indicated there was a lot they were not telling us. I can see where it may read questionable, though.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:53 AM on October 11, 2022
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:53 AM on October 11, 2022
He wasn't the kidnapper, though. He was some kind of unspecified, unexplained henchman.
For me, making this character someone who didn't necessarily read as Dutch wasn't about othering the henchman, it was about not implying some weird Dutch conspiracy.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:01 PM on October 11, 2022
For me, making this character someone who didn't necessarily read as Dutch wasn't about othering the henchman, it was about not implying some weird Dutch conspiracy.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:01 PM on October 11, 2022
37 minutes. That’s how long I lasted and having read what happened in the remaining hour, Jesus Mary Joseph and the wee donkey I’m glad I stopped when I did.
posted by chill at 10:29 AM on January 29, 2023
posted by chill at 10:29 AM on January 29, 2023
This is gonna sound nuts, but I might actually watch it again. It stuck with me. Not enjoyable, but substantial and serious and well-made. The longer I sit with it, the higher I'm finding I rate it.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:37 AM on January 30, 2023
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:37 AM on January 30, 2023
I hate it. Is it really a serious film? I'm not sure it is; if it does have something to say, I'm not it's anything that any random skit from I Think You Should Leave doesn't say as well or better in four minutes. But to me, the filmmaker is basically Patrick, someone who is fucking with you because you're letting him, and for exactly the same reason: he's a fucking asshole.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:46 PM on June 13, 2023
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:46 PM on June 13, 2023
It's been a little while since I saw this, but IIRC the music was very good, with lots of scary thriller music laid over very nonsinister visuals, that is comic at first, but the movie earns the chills by the end.
I don't often like the sort of "shadow couple" or home invasion-y movies -- I wanna call it cuckcore. This movie made the cut though, I liked it. Maybe because it's not like 80% about the sexualization of the wife and daughter like those movies often are. Bjørn is not the hero, not a guy seemed to design to appeal directly to a Hollywood producer.
Like if Michael Haneke directed an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Bwahaha.
Funny Games made me feel about Haneke the way that kittensforbreakfast describes, but to be clear I don't think this movie is quite like that. For me this goes on the same shelf as Spoorloos or The Chaser. Harrowing and cruel, but ultimately not quite breaching a bond of trust; not turning into a thing that just dances around and farts in the audience's fate and dares you to say it's shitty art. Not quite that. Maybe.
Re: Muhajid... Well it is racist. I think it might be a little like Borgman or Ils, a manifestation of middle class fears that is not meant to be real. It's not a call to be aggressive and racist and paranoid, it is a boogeyman, kind of a test or trap. I'm not really sure this is a good thing for a movie to be.
posted by fleacircus at 6:09 PM on November 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
I don't often like the sort of "shadow couple" or home invasion-y movies -- I wanna call it cuckcore. This movie made the cut though, I liked it. Maybe because it's not like 80% about the sexualization of the wife and daughter like those movies often are. Bjørn is not the hero, not a guy seemed to design to appeal directly to a Hollywood producer.
Like if Michael Haneke directed an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Bwahaha.
Funny Games made me feel about Haneke the way that kittensforbreakfast describes, but to be clear I don't think this movie is quite like that. For me this goes on the same shelf as Spoorloos or The Chaser. Harrowing and cruel, but ultimately not quite breaching a bond of trust; not turning into a thing that just dances around and farts in the audience's fate and dares you to say it's shitty art. Not quite that. Maybe.
Re: Muhajid... Well it is racist. I think it might be a little like Borgman or Ils, a manifestation of middle class fears that is not meant to be real. It's not a call to be aggressive and racist and paranoid, it is a boogeyman, kind of a test or trap. I'm not really sure this is a good thing for a movie to be.
posted by fleacircus at 6:09 PM on November 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
I hated it.
At some point I quit counting the number of times they meekly went along with it when some boundary was crossed, but it was very early on that I told my boyfriend "we'd be packing up and leaving at this point." Also very early on when I said "so eventually they're either going to have to kill them or be killed themselves."
Actual thing I actually said, about halfway through: "I'm not sure why she's taking her daughter and sneaking away; I would have doubled back to the kitchen then stabbed him in the ass."
The film explicitly makes the argument that awful things happened to the characters because the characters let them, and ... sort of? Was this film just a protracted argument in favor of The Gift of Fear? I don't know what to make of it, but I don't typically enjoy the kind of horror where I watch terrible things happening to someone and feel like they deserve it. I guess it just feels like torture and makes me feel like the one doing the torturing. There are all sorts of films arguing about the complicity of viewing, and many of them are done well, but this one was absolutely not for me.
posted by johnofjack at 2:38 PM on July 28
At some point I quit counting the number of times they meekly went along with it when some boundary was crossed, but it was very early on that I told my boyfriend "we'd be packing up and leaving at this point." Also very early on when I said "so eventually they're either going to have to kill them or be killed themselves."
Actual thing I actually said, about halfway through: "I'm not sure why she's taking her daughter and sneaking away; I would have doubled back to the kitchen then stabbed him in the ass."
The film explicitly makes the argument that awful things happened to the characters because the characters let them, and ... sort of? Was this film just a protracted argument in favor of The Gift of Fear? I don't know what to make of it, but I don't typically enjoy the kind of horror where I watch terrible things happening to someone and feel like they deserve it. I guess it just feels like torture and makes me feel like the one doing the torturing. There are all sorts of films arguing about the complicity of viewing, and many of them are done well, but this one was absolutely not for me.
posted by johnofjack at 2:38 PM on July 28
So did they remake this? Because I think I saw a trailer for it starring James McAvoy as the psychopath dad.
posted by praemunire at 3:37 PM on July 28
posted by praemunire at 3:37 PM on July 28
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posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:41 AM on September 16, 2022 [1 favorite]