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tonight's feature: Speak No Evil (2022) on Shudder
My hot takes: "annoying" "an hour too long" "disturbing and frustrating"
Speak No Evil is some heady and twisted Scandanavian horror. Basically a long descent into annoyingly staying polite and quiet while someone else slowly becomes a bigger and bigger asshole with every passing moment. Also a perfect analogy of when to get up and leave the room if you're being disrespected.
On vacation in Italy, Danish couple Bjørn and Louise and their daughter Agnes meet a Dutch family: Patrick, Karin and their depressed son Abel, allegedly born without a tongue. They seem to hit it off and eventually Patrick invites the Danes to a weekend at his home in the Netherlands. Things start off weird and get weirder, darker and significantly more annoying as the Dutch couple keep pushing the boundaries of dickish behavior. Just past the point where I wrote the entire film off as "a cringey uncomfortable weekend in the Netherlands" things take a shocking turn and one couple become victims of the other.
One review I read said Speak No Evil was a "very black dramedy" and "a malevolent satire on the Nordic culture of taking good manners to the extreme" which makes some of the grating plot points more understandable. It's infuriating to watch someone not fight for their lives when their family is in danger. Maybe I don't quite get the culture references but if someone was going to hurt my wife and kid I am probably going to at least try to gouge their eyes out with whatever is handy. 7 stuffed bunnies out of 10.
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