Producer Jason Blum got a call from an executive who saw a thriller that got under his skin, and was eager to see this film. The movie was the 2022 Danish film, Gaesterne, and the screenplay went on to be the inspiration for the latest Blumhouse thriller Speak No Evil. “I’m always glad to be the guy who gets the call when someone sees something disturbing— if it ruins your day, call me!— so I arranged to see it and I was floored. As it unfolded, I recoiled with each new revelation, and when it was over, I couldn’t shake it. I believed that in the right hands, an English language reinterpretation could be a very memorable, very unsettling, very special film,” Blum says.
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Speak No Evil follows an American family who befriends a British family, and subsequently gets invited to a vacation on their idyllic British farmhouse. Not all is what it seems though, and soon enough the family’s dream getaway turns into a nightmare. To helm the film, Blum turned to horror writer-director James Watkins, who saw the potential within the material. . “I loved the sly and relatable conceit: people on holiday questioning the direction of their lives and befriending a couple who they think might hold the answers,” Watkins says. “The film really hooked me on a thematic level: its exploration of how modern society shackles us with rules and how we struggle to negotiate them.”
The film explores these themes through the Dalton family, Americans living in England, consisting of parents Ben and Louise, and their pre-teen daughter Agnes. Ben and Louise are struggling with their sense of distance from each other, while having crises of identity. “The Daltons, particularly Ben, have been ground down by life, or at least, their lives don’t match up to the packaged perfect lives they are daily told they should be living by the feeds on their devices,” Watkins says. “‘Affluenza’ used to be the term – people who have lots of material things but are still struggling emotionally. Ben is particularly troubled. He feels that he’s past his prime, on the scrapheap. He’s not sure how to negotiate the modern world and its new codes,” Watkins says.
A chance to get away from it all takes the form of a British family: Paddy, who is the charismatic head of the household, Ciara, his wife, and their mute son Ant. “Paddy opens a door for Ben that makes him wonder: is there a better way of living? But when they visit the farm so Ben can live out these fantasies of rural authenticity, things aren’t quite what they imagined. The film becomes a kind of ‘check your privilege’ morality tale: Be careful what you wish for when you are complacent about your security and comforts, when you’re feeling trapped by ‘social norms’ and when you want to loosen up and find your animal self. You may think you want danger. But when real danger comes, do you even know how to deal with it?” Watkins continues.
Darkness unfolds as Speak No Evil arrives in Philippine cinemas on September 11, from Universal Pictures International.
