Movie Review: Speak No Evil (2024) seen in theatres

Horror/Thriller: not recommended for young children; frightening scenes, coarse language, sexual content and dialogue, mature themes, graphic violence, scenes of child endangerment, child abuse, and minor scenes which imply possible pedophilia

This movie follows a couple with a young son who is shown to apparently have a disability which limits has ability to communicate. After they encounter another couple with a young daughter, all seems well until the couple begins to show signs that they are not as nice as they seem.

I’ve seen a lot of movies like this. Movies which are supposedly horror films where one person or a group of people, befriend another person or group of people who appear harmless at first but then turn out to have a dark side. Once this dark side becomes apparent to the unsuspecting couple, the rest of the movie is pretty predictable. They’ll end up in a big fight with the bad guys getting their comeuppance, (most of the time,) either by way of arrest or murder, though the latter seems to always be the case in most movies I’ve seen. While this movie sort of presents this same formula, I have to give it props for not being too predictable as well as adding other elements to their story which most other movies do not. These elements include their child appearing to have a disability which limits his communication when in reality, his parents caused him to sustain it by cutting his tongue out of his mouth, (which is not shown in the actual movie but is explained by him through a series of photos presented to the little girl near the ending.) This movie also took off into territory which may be pushing the boundaries of what they were able to get away with, and would have if they went any further. This movie presents a possible romantic connection between the little girl and the bad father, (though nothing sexual is shown,) as she is shown to be sleeping in the same bed with him in his underwear which goes undetected by her mother at first but eventually this is what planted the seeds for her to believe something was wrong which sets the tone for the ending of the movie. Another scene which is questionable in my view is his dialogue towards the end of the film after his wife is killed and he is shown to hold her at gun point.

“Well, you killed my wife. You think I’m going to hurt your daughter? She’s the only one I have to take care of me now.”

At least from my perspective, taking care of him may have an implication of a sexual nature. Whether this was his intention or not is unknown but this is just the way I interpreted this line used by him.

There is one more thing I have to give this movie credit for that not a lot of horror movies are able to do. This is to actually scare me and leave me on the edge of my seat. Like I said before, almost all other horror movies I’ve seen can’t really be seen as such as they are predictable and almost present themselves as thrillers more than horrors. It’s pretty much a foregone conclusion about how the movie will end but it’s just a matter of how long it will take to get to that point. Well, this movie had me questioning throughout how it would end, whether they would attempt to harm the children, or if the daughter turned on her parents, if they would end up murdering both of them, if cops would arrive, ETC. To make it simple, there were numerous ways this movie could have ended which made it worth watching more rather than the ending basically being given away in the first few minutes.

I know this may sound stupid but I was actually stupidly worried about my mother coming across a person of that nature, (though not the actor himself,) but maybe a person who has his Scottish accent as my mother tends to be able to befriend almost everybody she comes across. I was worried that if she found a Scottish friend, the same thing would happen to her as what happened to these people in the movie. As the movie ended, I made the ridiculous comment to Chris that I had to warn mom to stay away from people who are Scottish, to which he replied, “It’s just a movie.” This may be the case. It may be just a movie but unlike others I’ve seen recently, it was a very good one. This will be reflected in the overall review of this movie. Honestly, they need to make more movies like this.

Movie rating: 10 out of 10

Next movie review: TBD although something on Netflix