gabriel’s review published on Letterboxd:
Slow paced psychological thrillers are somewhat of a chore to get through and the saddest part about it is that most of them don’t have a final payoff to make it all worthwhile. The american remake of Speak No Evil isn’t fully a victim to that and sprinkles enough moments of gripping tension to try and make its runtime feel not as heavy on the audience’s shoulders. It isn’t always a homerun in that sense, especially in the beginning where it takes long for the film to find its footing and it only ever does so when James McAvoy showcases just how much he loves to play a sick and twisted nut job. Speak No Evil is carried on the back of his deliciously unhinged performance through more than one hour of awkward silences and a sleepy pacing that seems to wake up very rarely as the story is supposedly being brewed. When it’s time for the film to not rely as heavily on McAvoy’s performance to be interesting, when the story finally starts to walk on its own and show some promise, the payoff we get from this journey is an edge of your seat experience whether from the extraordinary tension that lingers in the atmosphere or the plain dumbness found in the group of people we’re supposed to root for (that make it really hard for us to do so).
The bigger downside in the way Speak No Evil wraps everything up is that while it has that wicked spirit in anticipating the coming of evil, when the time comes the film retracts and exposes itself as a less bold version of the original, not having the balls to create the edgy ending no one would dare speak of.
2024 Ranked
gabriel liked this review
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