Speak No Evil Director James Watkins on Remake’s Different Ending

Blumhouse’s new thriller, Speak No Evil (now in theaters!) is a reimagining of a Danish film of the same name from two years ago. It follows a married couple and their daughter who accept an invitation to visit the country house of another couple and their son after meeting on vacation. Once there, though, it becomes clear that their hosts are not what they seem and that they’re in grave danger. 

It’s a frightening, uncomfortable film filled with challenging themes (in addition to some laughs, it must be said). And yet, Speak No Evil is not nearly as dark as it could be, in large part because the ending is very, very different from the Danish original. Writer-director James Watkins says there’s a good reason for the change. 

Speak No Evil Writer-director James Watkins  on the American version’s different ending

In both films, the visiting couple discovers that their hosts are planning on killing them, the same way they’ve killed all the past “new friends” they met on vacation. The boy they thought was their host’s son is, in fact, the child of their previous victims, and he wasn’t born with a congenital condition — they cut his tongue out so he couldn’t reveal the truth. 

In the Danish version, the hosts win. They kill their fake son, Abel, stone their guests Bjørn and Louise to death, and slice off young Agnes’ tongue so that she can be their new “child” and lure the next set of visitors to their deaths. 

That’s not what happens in the American version, as Ben (Scoot McNairy) and especially Louise (Mackenzie Davis) fight back against their hosts and would-be killers, Paddy (James McAvoy) and and Ciara (Aisling Franciosi). It’s almost a high-stakes, horror version of Home Alone as they, along with their daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler) and the mute Ant (Dan Hough), manage to kill Paddy and Ciara and escape. 

Watkins told SYFY WIRE there were two main reasons why he opted for a radically different ending. The first is that he’d already made a horror movie with a similarly bleak ending — the 2008 film Eden Lake. In what Watkins described as “kind of a weird circle,” he says Danish director Christian Tafdrup told him Eden Lake was an inspiration for the original Speak No Evil.

But the bigger, more thematic reason for the change has to do not with the fact that this is an American adaptation, but that the main characters are American. In the new movie, Ben and Louise are American expats living in London. 

“Once the cat’s out of the bag — and they’re confronted with violence, their own mortality, and danger to themselves and their child — I think, as Americans, they would at least try,” Watkins says, contrasting the action-packed final act of his movie to the more resigned actions of the original Danish couple. “Whether it was to run, hide, fight, whatever. However ineptly they do it, I just didn’t believe that these Americans would react in that way.” 

The turning of the tables and what passes for a “happy” ending in the new Speak No Evil, means the film ends with fist-pumping catharsis rather than the grim bummer ending of the original. But far from being a cynical ploy to American audiences, Watkins says it lets the movie explore the themes of the original from a different perspective. 

“The film is all about not doing things when there’s a veneer of politeness,” he explains. “But when things reach a point of overt violence, I don’t think those rules apply. I think you’re now in the Wild West. You’re now in caveman territory. I wanted to explore what happens when civilization breaks down. Let’s confront people who are used to civilization with violence and see how they respond. It’s a totally different dynamic.” 

As McNairy, who plays Ben (who survives the end of the movie unlike his Danish counterpart Bjørn) told SYFY WIRE, the two movies are “the same song.”

“One’s played in acoustic, and one’s played in electric guitar,” McNairy says. “But it’s still the same song.”

Speak No Evil is now in theaters. Click here to pick up tickets!