Direction: Christian Tafdrup
Country: Denmark
Speak No Evil is a well-filmed, highly unsettling Danish thriller whose story exudes gripping familiarity before taking us to harrowing conclusions. Adopting a hyper-realistic style, director Christian Tafdrup (Parents, 2016; A Horrible Woman, 2017) conjures up a mad world of predators and prey with dramatic power and a crescendo of emotions. His art consists in exacerbating borders to better abolish them, in a formally controlled exercise in suspense.
Co-written by Christian and his brother Mads, the story follows a Danish couple - the easygoing Bjorn (Morten Burian) and the astute Louise (Sidsel Siem Koch) - on holidays in Tuscany. There, they meet an opaque Dutch couple - Patrick (Fedja van Huêt ) and Karin (Karina Smulders) - who, months later, invite them to a weekend getaway in their isolated house situated in the Netherlands’ countryside. The circumstances of their staying might have been different, but this family seems to be inevitably drawn into a nightmarish tragedy.
While the story is pretty strong, there are a couple of scenes that felt a bit awkward, especially those involving Bjorn’s vulnerable moments in the company of Patrick. His weakness and naivety were almost unbearable to me. However, and eschewing any type of stereotype about what pure parental ferocity should be, I got the impression that this couple could have offered more resistance by any possible means. This is a pretty sick game we have here.
All four adult actors and the two kids do a great job, but a very special mention goes to Ms. Koch, who was fantastic at every single instance, and van Huêt, for his cunning manifestation of cordiality and pugnacity. Disseminating helplessness and dread in the last minutes, at the sound of an ethereal “Requiem” composed by Sune Kolster, this dismal film will teach you to never trust strangers.
