It’s often rare for a remake to speak to audiences more than its original, but new horror movie Speak No Evil may have done just that after debuting to an impressive Rotten Tomatoes score.
The original Danish-language movie, which was released in 2022, has a score of 84% (based on 101 reviews), while the new Hollywood remake is currently sitting at 87% (based on 45 reviews).
Our own four-star Speak No Evil review praises the movie for “walking a thin line between honoring the original, treading its own path to justify its existence, and offering some choicely brutal surprises.”
The Independent praises leading man James McAvoy for “delivering one of the most impressively repugnant performances of the year,” while Time Out says the remake is “seriously unnerving in its own way.”
However, not everyone is a fan. Slant Magazine writes that “this hollow attempt to turn a provocative showpiece into a crowd-pleaser makes you wonder if the filmmakers are actively disdainful of the original.”
In the original movie, a Danish family meets a Dutch family while on holiday in Tuscany, Italy, who invites them to reunite at their home for a weekend sometime later. In the remake, the two families are American and English. In both movies, a weekend away in the countryside with new friends soon takes a sinister turn, but the two films differ most broadly in the final act. But no spoilers from us here…
Speak No Evil arrives in theaters on September 13. In the meantime, check out our guide to the other best upcoming horror movies still to come in 2024.
