Speak No Evil

Silence isn't golden

Despite what its blandly generic title might lead you to imagine, writer-director James Watkins’ Speak No Evil is not some supernatural horror tale. It’s much more closely aligned with Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs (1971), based on Gordon M. Williams' 1969 novel The Siege of Trencher's Farm and the granddaddy of stories in which city mice profoundly misread the signals of country mice and pay dearly for their vaguely elitist cultural deafness. Let’s take a moment to recall civilized, urban, let’s-talk-this-through adult David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman), married to Cornish back-country girl Amy (Susan George), finally pushed into picking up a shotgun and declaring: “I will NOT allow violence against this house!”

The set-up here is similar, but not till the last third — and with a lot less MacGyver moxie by American businessman Ben Dalton (Scoot McNairy), who has uprooted his publicist wife Louise (Mackenzie Davis) and their extremely shy 11-year-old daughter Agnes (Alix West Lefler) in order to take a new job in his firm’s London office. He subsequently was downsized, and is using part of his severance to take a much-needed family vacation in Tuscany. Agnes, despite being almost 12, is deeply attached to her small plush rabbit, Hoppy. When she mislays the bunny, fellow tourist Paddy (James McAvoy), who’s from the UK, finds the missing doll and racks up mega points with Louise and Ben.